When designing a data warehouse, you will need to identify which of
your tables and views represent facts (containing numerical values such as sales, revenue,
or budget figures), and which dimensions (providing ways of aggregating these figures, such
as by region, date, customer, or product). PowerDesigner can retrieve the multidimensional
type of a table by analyzing the references attached to it, where child tables or views are
identified as candidate facts and parent tables or views are identified as candidate
dimensions.
- Select to open the Multidimensional Objects Retrieval Wizard.
- Specify the objects to be retrieved. By default both Facts and Dimensions will be retrieved.
Note:
If you are working with Sybase AS IQ v12.0 or higher,
you can also select to automatically rebuild join indexes after
retrieving multidimensional objects. For more information, see
Join Indexes (IQ/Oracle).
- [optional] Click the Selection tab to
specify which tables to consider as candidates for fact or dimension tables. By
default, all tables except those that have their Dimensional
type set to Exclude are selected (see Table Properties).
- Click OK to retrieve the
multidimensional objects.
The selected tables are assigned a multidimensional type, and
a type icon is displayed in the upper left corner of each table's
symbol:
|
Fact table
|
Dimension table
|
|---|
|
|
- [optional] Review the types identified by PowerDesigner and, if necessary,
modify them by changing the value of the Dimensional type
field on the General tab of the table or view property
sheet.