09 March 2010

🕋Data Warehousing: Degenerate Dimension (Definitions)

"Degenerate dimensions represent a business event in the fact table. For example, a business event would consist of an order, invoice, or a shipping ticket. Degenerate dimensions are not dimensional keys or part of the additive numeric facts and do not have an associated dimension table." (Microsoft Corporation, "Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Data Warehouse Training Kit", 2000)

"A dimension key, such as a transaction number, invoice number, ticket number, or bill-of-lading number, that has no attributes and hence does not join to an actual dimension table." (Ralph Kimball & Margy Ross, "The Data Warehouse Toolkit" 2nd Ed., 2002)

"A dimension whose members are stored in a fact table instead of a dimension table." (Reed Jacobsen & Stacia Misner, "Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services Step by Step", 2006)

"A dimension where there are no valid dimensional attributes other than a unique identifier in a one-to-one relationship with a fact table." (DAMA International, "The DAMA Dictionary of Data Management", 2011)

"A relationship between a dimension and a measure group in which the dimension main table is the same as the measure group table." (Microsoft, "SQL Server 2012 Glossary", 2012)

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