Building a data warehouse involves several complicated steps (some of which I described in my previous articles for InformIT). After the data warehousing architect locates all data elements necessary to support the data warehouse, it is time to build a dimensional model. As data change in transactional systems, the data warehouse needs to have a way of tracking and reflecting such changes. Populating fact and dimension tables can take considerable amount of time if the population routines aren't designed carefully. This article addresses some of the challenges involved in building and maintaining dimensional databases that serve as the found..
