BASICS: VDDW Architecture   >   Common Dimensions

• Enlarge VDDW Architecture VDDW Components: Overview Common Dimensions Common Schemas ABC Allocation Activity Dimension Contribution & Consumption OLAP HyperCube What's Left Out

  The VDDW relies upon the existence of conformed dimensions.  If the enterprise lacks a conformed dimension bus, building one becomes part of the VDDW initiative.

• What is a "conformed dimension?"  It is a database table that represents a common and well-defined view of a key business entity, like “Customer” or “Product” or “Supplier”.  The adjective “conformed” implies that a rigorous analysis & design process has been undertaken to determine what key pieces of data should be included on the dimension, and that the definition of the dimension enjoys broad consensus. Dimensions typically contain the master data that provides the various row and column headers for reports, and a report can typically be described in terms of what dimensions it combines and at what level of granularity.  For example, “Sales by Customer by Region by Quarter”, “Daily Aging Receivables by Business Unit”, “On hand inventory balances by Product by Warehouse”, etc. Each of the italicized nouns in the preceding sentence would be an example of a dimension.

• Taken together, the collection of a company’s conformed dimensions constitute a “bus” across which various key business metrics (a.k.a “facts” or “measures” or “KPI’s” – “key performance indicators”) can be staged for end-user analysis.
  

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