Bus Matrix

…the foundation of your Dimensional Data Warehouse

The Bus Matrix is the cornerstone of a successful Dimensional Data Warehouse strategy. It serves many purposes: from communicating requirements, capabilities, and expectations with the business users down to the prioritization and delegation of tasks across the development team. Join me in this session and learn what a Bus Matrix is, why it is the single most important document in your Data Warehouse project, and what can go wrong without it. We’ll also cover several approaches for creating and maintaining the Bus Matrix document.

Downloads

• Slides (updated 3/18/2014)
• Video Recording (PragmaticWorks)

References and Related Material

• Links
  • Kimball Forum – great resource for dimensional modeling questions.
  • LearnDataVault – resource for “authentic” Data Vault training
  • Kimball vs Inmon – good blog post describing the characteristics of each
  • The Kimball Approach – overview of approach to dimensional modeling
  • OLAP Cube Documentation – SSRS report pack for automated bus matrix + data dictionary reporting
  • Why Semantic Layer – lots of overlap between semantic layer and dimensional model layer

  • Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing 

    Taking an agile approach to implementation – nice breakdown of why Agile is preferred over Waterfall for DW/BI projects

  • Why Dimensional Modeling – nice breakdown on why dimensional models are important
  • Conformed Dimensions, the key to cross process analysis – this blog post breaks down the GMROII calculation in the presentation from start to finish
  • Transforming Source Keys to Real Keys – Part 1: Introducing Map tables – blog post showing how to map keys between multiple source systems in order to conform dimensions
  • Transforming Source Keys to Real Keys – Part 2: Using Maps To Fix Key Problems
• Bloggers/Tweeters
  • Alex Whittles (b | t)
  • James Serra (b | t)
  • Dan Linstedt (b | t)
  • Garrett Edmondson (b | t)
  • Teo Lachev (b | t)
  • Paul Felix (b | t)
• Books
  • The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Definitive Guide to Dimensional Modeling
  • The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit
  • Star Schema: A Complete Reference – this is a great book that refines and expands upon the concepts introduced in The Data Warehouse Toolkit.
  • Super Charge Your Data Warehouse: Invaluable Data Modeling Rules to Implement Your Data Vault
• Presentations
  • Data Modeling for Analysis Services Cubes – great session showing how fact tables can be modeled in different ways to support different metrics
  • Data Vault Data Warehouse Architecture (PASS DW/BI Virtual Chapter)