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Best Practices for SAP BI using DB2 9 for z/OS - IBM Redbooks

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An InfoCube in <strong>SAP</strong> <strong>BI</strong> can have up to 16 dimensions. By default, every<br />

InfoCube has the three standard dimensions data package, time, and unit.<br />

<strong>SAP</strong> <strong>BI</strong> uses an extended star schema, which builds on the basic star schema by<br />

storing master data about attributes, hierarchies, and text, in separate tables that<br />

are shared between InfoCubes. This reduces data redundancies because<br />

master data is stored only once, and then used by various InfoCubes.<br />

In Figure 12-6, actual characteristic values, such as the name of a region, are<br />

shown in the dimension tables. In reality, characteristic values are replaced by<br />

surrogate identifiers (SIDs). These are numeric key values (4-byte integers),<br />

which are more compact than the characteristic values.<br />

The actual characteristic values are stored in the master table. There<strong>for</strong>e, you<br />

have <strong>for</strong>eign key relationships between each characteristic in a dimension table<br />

and the corresponding attribute, hierarchy, and text tables. SIDs are used to<br />

keep dimension tables as small as possible, since they can also grow very large.<br />

Request dimension<br />

R Data Request #<br />

0<br />

. . .<br />

E - Fact table<br />

( R = 0 )<br />

Figure 12-6 Foreign-key relationships<br />

<strong>SAP</strong> <strong>BI</strong> provides the option to define a very large dimension as a line item<br />

dimension. In this case, the corresponding dimension is not stored as a separate<br />

table, but rather it is stored directly in the E- fact table. This eliminates the<br />

necessary join operation between dimension and fact table during <strong>SAP</strong> <strong>BI</strong> query<br />

processing, which can provide improved query per<strong>for</strong>mance.<br />

266 <strong>Best</strong> <strong>Practices</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>SAP</strong> <strong>BI</strong> <strong>using</strong> <strong>DB2</strong> 9 <strong>for</strong> z/<strong>OS</strong><br />

Master data<br />

Customer # Name Location<br />

13970522 Gladview, Inc. Palo Alto<br />

Customer dimension<br />

C Customer # Region …<br />

13970522 west ...<br />

InfoCube<br />

R P C T Quantity Revenue Discount Sales overhead<br />

250 $500,000 $50,000 $280,000<br />

50 $100,000 $7,500 $60,000<br />

… … … ...<br />

F - Fact table R P C T Quantity Revenue Discount Sales overhead<br />

( R > 0 )<br />

150 $300,000 $30,000 $180,000<br />

30 $50,000 $2,500 $20,000<br />

Product dimension<br />

… … … ...<br />

P Product # Product group …<br />

T Period Fiscal year …<br />

2101004 displays ...<br />

10 2007 ...<br />

Time dimension

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