Data
Modelling
Data Modelling Basics
• Data modeling is the process of
organizing and structuring data in
a way that makes it easy to
understand and analyze.
• One way to represent this data
model is through an Entity-
Relationship Diagram (ERD)
Why Data Modelling?
• Ensure that data is clean,
consistent, and accurate.
• This will allow you to create
reports and dashboards that are
easy to understand and that
provide valuable insights into
your data.
Relationships
• Importance: Relationships between tables are
important for accurate analysis because they allow you
to join tables together to create a single dataset. This
allows you to perform calculations and generate insights
that would not be possible if the tables were not related.
Types of relationships:
• One-to-one relationships: A one-to-one relationship is a
relationship between two tables where each row in one
table corresponds to exactly one row in the other table.
• One-to-many relationships: A one-to-many relationship is
a relationship between two tables where each row in one
table can correspond to multiple rows in the other table.
• Many-to-many relationships: A many-to-many
relationship is a relationship between two tables where
each row in one table can correspond to multiple rows in
the other table, and vice versa.
Data Modelling Basics – Power BI’s ERD
What to consider
1. What are you measuring
2. What business problems are you
solving?
3. How much data are you working
with?
4. What are your data sources?
Components of Data Modelling?
• Data Sources: Identify the data sources
that will be used. E.g databases, Excel files,
web services, and other types of data
repositories.
• Data Transformation: Transform the data
into a usable format. This process may
involve cleaning, filtering, and aggregating
the data.
• Relationships: Relationships are used to
connect the data in different tables. This
allows users to drill down into the data and
to see how different pieces of data are
related to each other.
Dimension Modelling
• Specific technique within data
modeling that focuses on organizing
data for analytical purposes, typically
within a data warehouse or business
intelligence environment. It involves
structuring and designing dimensions
and their relationships to support
efficient and effective data analysis.
• data modeling technique that uses
dimensions and facts to organize data
in a data warehouse
Benefits of Dimension Modelling
• Improved Data Understanding: Dimensional modeling provides
a clear and intuitive representation of data. It helps business users
understand the relationships between different data elements
• Ease of use: Dimensional models are designed to be easy to
query and analyze. This makes them ideal for business
intelligence applications.
• Performance: Dimensional models are optimized for
performance. This means that they can be queried and analyzed
quickly, even with large datasets.
• Flexibility: Dimensional models are flexible and can be easily
adapted to changing business requirements.
• Support for Data Governance: Dimensional modeling
contributes to effective data governance practices. By establishing
clear relationships and definitions of data elements, it helps create
a common understanding and standardization across the
organization.
Dimension Modelling
Techniques
• Star Schema
• Snowflake Schema
Star Schema
• A star schema is a database organizational structure
optimized for use in a data warehouse or business
intelligence that uses a single large fact table to store
transactional or measured data, and one or more smaller
dimensional tables that store attributes about the data.
Star Schema
Fact Table
• Fact Table contains the measurements or metrics of a
business process.
• It is often used to store data that can be quantified, such as
sales figures, inventory levels, or number of customers.
• For example, a fact table in a retail store's data model might
contain columns for the date of the sale, the product sold,
the quantity of the product sold, and the total sales amount.
• It may be transactional -- in that rows are added as events
happen -- or it may be a snapshot of historical data up to a
point in time.
Dimension Table
• Dimension tables store supporting information to the fact
table.
• Dimension table contains the attributes or characteristics of a
business process.
• It is often used to store data that describes the context of the
measurements in the fact table, such as the location of a
store, the category of a product, or the demographic
information of a customer.
• For example, a dimension table in a retail store's data model
might contain columns for the store location, the product
category, and the customer's age and gender.
Snowflake Schema
• Variation of the Star Schema.
• Snowflaking is a form of dimensional modeling in which
dimensions are stored in multiple related dimension tables
• The schema is diagramed with each fact surrounded by its
associated dimensions (as in a star schema), and those
dimensions are further related to other dimensions, branching
out into a snowflake pattern.
Snowflake Schema
Tips for dimension modelling
• Use a consistent naming convention: This will make it
easier to understand and maintain the model.
• Document the model: This will help to ensure that everyone
who uses the model understands how it works.
• Test the model: This will help to identify any problems with
the model before it is used in production.
• Keep the model up to date: This will ensure that the model
reflects the current state of the business.
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