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Design Tips
The Kimball Group delivers practical techniques via our monthly email Design Tips, along with reminders about upcoming worldwide classes and events. Your monthly Design Tip subscription is unique:
   •  No membership fee
   • Vendor independent
   • Reliable, real-world guidance, not theory
   • Written by Kimball Group members, the only practitioners certified by Ralph
Design Tips 2008—Subscribe now to receive 2008 Design Tips!
Design Tip #101 Slowly Changing Vocabulary
Design Tip #100 Keep Your Keys Simple
Design Tip #99 Staging Areas and ETL Tools
Design Tip #98 Focus on Data Stewardship
Design Tips 2007 (PDF format—2007 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #97 Modeling Data as Both a Fact and Dimension Attribute
Design Tip #96 Think Like A Software Development Manager
Design Tip #95 Patterns to Avoid when Modeling Header/Line Item Transactions
Design Tip #94 Building Custom Tools for the DW/BI System
Design Tip #93 Transactions Create Time Spans
Design Tip #92 Dimension Manager and Fact Provider
Design Tip #91 Marketing the DW/BI System
Design Tip #90 Slowly Changing Entities
Design Tip #89

The Real Time Triage
Design Tip #88 Dashboards Done Right
Design Tip #87 Combining SCD Techniques Having It Both Ways
Design Tips 2006 (PDF format—2006 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #86

Reference Dimensions for Infrequently-Accessed Degenerates
Design Tip #85 Smart Date Keys to Partition Fact Tables
Design Tip #84 Readers’ Suggestions on Fact Table Surrogate Keys
Design Tip #83 Resist Abstract Generic Dimensions
Design Tip #82 Pivoting the Fact Table with a Fact Dimension
Design Tip #81 Fact Table Surrogate Keys
Design Tip #80 Dimension Row Change Reason Attributes
Design Tip #79 Dangerously Large Dimension Tables
Design Tip #78 Late Arriving Dimension Rows
Design Tip #77 Warning: Summary Data may be Hazardous
Design Tip #76

Advantages of a 64-bit Server
Design Tip #75
Creating the Metadata Strategy
Design Tips 2005 (PDF format—2005 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #74

Compliance-Enabled Data Warehouses
Design Tip #73 Relating to Agile Methodologies
Design Tip #72 Business Process Decoder Ring
Design Tip #71 Naming Conventions
Design Tip #70 Architecting Data for MS SQL Server 2005
Design Tip #69 Identifying Business Processes
Design Tip #68 Simple Drill-Across in SQL
Design Tip #67 Maintaining Back Pointers to Operational Sources
Design Tip #66 Implementation Analysis Paralysis
Design Tip #65 Document the ETL System
Design Tip #64 Avoid Isolating the DW and BI Teams
Design Tip #63
Building a Change Data Capture System
Design Tips 2004 (PDF format—2004 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #62 Alternate Hierarchies
Design Tip #61 Handling all the Dates
Design Tip #60 Big Shifts in Business Intelligence
Design Tip #59 Surprising Value of Data Profiling
Design Tip #58 BI Portal
Design Tip #57 Early Arriving Facts
Design Tip #56 Dimensional Modeling for Microsoft Analysis Services
Design Tip #55 Exploring Text Facts
Design Tip #54 Delivering Historical and Current Perspectives
Design Tip #53 Dimension Embellishments
Design Tip #52 Improving Operating Procedures
Design Tip #51
Latest Thinking on Time Dimension Tables
Design Tips 2003 (PDF format—2003 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #50 Factless Fact Tables
Design Tip #49 Off the Bench about the Bottoms Up Misnomer
Design Tip #48 De-clutter with Junk Dimensions
Design Tip #47 Business Initiatives versus Business Processes
Design Tip #46 Another Look at Degenerate Dimensions
Design Tip #45 Techniques for Modeling Intellectual Capital
Design Tip #44 Reliance on the BI Tool’s Metadata
Design Tip #43 Dealing With Nulls in a Dimensional Model
Design Tip #42 Combining Periodic and Accumulating Snapshots
Design Tips 2002 (PDF format—2002 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #41 Drill Down into a Detailed Bus Matrix
Design Tip #40 Structure of an Analytic Application
Design Tip #39 Bus Architecture Foundation for Analytic Applications
Design Tip #38 Analytic Application—What's That?
Design Tip #37 Modeling a Pipeline with Accumulating Snapshots
Design Tip #36 To Be or Not To Be Centralized
Design Tip #35 Modeling Time Spans
Design Tip #34 You Don't Need an EDW
Design Tip #33 Using CRM Measures as Behavior Tags
Design Tip #32 Doing the Work at Extract Time
Design Tips 2001 (PDF format—2001 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #31 Designing a Real Time Partition
Design Tip #30 Put your Fact Tables on a Diet
Design Tip #29 Graceful Modifications to Existing Fact and Dimension Tables
Design Tip #28 Avoiding Catastrophic Failure of the Data Warehouse
Design Tip #27 Being Off-line as Little as Possible
Design Tip #26 Audit Dimensions to Track Lineage and Confidence
Design Tip #25 Dimensional Models for Parent-Child Applications
Design Tip #24 Multinational Dimensional Data Warehouse Considerations
Design Tip #23 Rolling Prediction of the Future
Design Tip #22 Variable Depth Customer Dimensions
Design Tip #21 Declaring the Grain
Design Tip #20 Sparse Facts and Facts with Short Lifetimes
Design Tip #19 Replicating Dimensions Correctly
Design Tip #18 Taking the Publishing Metaphor Seriously
Design Tip #17 Populating Hierarchy Helper Tables
Design Tips 2000 (PDF format—2000 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #16 Hot Swappable Dimensions
Design Tip #15 Combining SCD Techniques
Design Tip #14 Arbitrary Balance Reporting with Transaction Facts
Design Tip #13 When Fact Tables can be used as Dimensions
Design Tip #12 Accurate Counting with a Dimensional Supplement
Design Tip #11 Accurate Counts within a Dimension
Design Tip #10 Is your Data Correct
Design Tip #9 Processing Slowly Changing Dimensions during Initial Load
Design Tip #8 Perfectly Partioning History with Type 2 SCD
Design Tip #7 Getting your Data Warehouse back on Track
Design Tip #6 Showing the Correlation between Dimensions
Design Tip #5 Surrogate Keys for the Time Dimension
Design Tip #4 Fast Changing Complex Customer Dimensions
Design Tip #3 Focus on Business Process, not Business Departments
Design Tip #2 Multiple Time Stamps
Design Tip #1 Guidelines for an Expressive Clickstream Data Mart


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