1. Warehouse Architecture
Two dominant views
Kimball’s Multidimensional Model (MD)
Inmon’s Corporate Information Factory (CIF)
Both utilize dimension modeling
Both emphasize enterprise level integration of data
March 2004
Ron McFadyen

2. Warehouse Architecture
Kimball’s Dimensional Model (simplified)
Bus Architecture is the cornerstone
Warehouse is built on dimensional modeling principles
Staging area is used to maintain and build conformed dimensions and facts
Dimensional
Models
Staging
Area
ETL
ETL
Detailed atomic data and summary data
March 2004
Ron McFadyen

3. Warehouse Architecture
Inmon’s CIF (simplified)
A warehouse is built with atomic data and is based on normalized structures. Data marts are fed from the normalized data warehouse
End-users can access the data warehouse and the data marts
Data marts may be star schemas or other structures
Data
Marts
Normalized
Data
Warehouse
ETL
ETL
Summary
data
Detailed atomic data
March 2004
Ron McFadyen