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Strategies to Manage Dimension Change in Data Modeling for OLAP

Tim Peterson, the designer of CubeSlice and its predecessor products, gave a presentation entitled "Strategies to Manage Dimension Change in Data Modeling for OLAP" at the PASS North America conference in Denver in January, 2002.  See the PowerPoint   presentation here. (240 kb)

Managing the change of dimension information is one of the most difficult challenges in designing an OLAP system. This session considered the options that are available for managing changing dimensions and the impact of each option on the OLAP end-user. The subordinate dimension strategy was presented in detail, a strategy that maintains the full consistency of past and future OLAP results. You will learn how to implement each of the possible strategies using DTS and Analysis Services.

Three things attendees learned: 

• What options are available for handling changing dimensions and how these choices affect the OLAP end-user. 

• How the subordinate dimension strategy maintains the consistency of OLAP browsing, no matter how much the dimension information changes. 

• How to implement the different strategies for handling dimension change with DTS and Analysis Services.