Definition
A dimension is a hierarchically organized set of dimension values, providing categorical information for characterizing a particular aspect of the data stored in a multidimensional cube.
Key Points
As an example, a three-dimensional cube for capturing sales may have a Product dimension, a Time dimension, and a Store dimension. The Product dimension captures information about the product sold, such as textual description, color, weight, etc., as well as groupings of products (product groups, product families, etc.). The Time dimension captures information about the time of the sale, at the Date level or finer, as well as groupings of time such as Week, Month, Weekday, Quarter and Year. It may also contain application-specific time-related information, e.g., what the temperature was on the particular day (interesting for ice cream sellers) or whether there was a special event in town on that day, e.g., a big sports event. The Store dimension captures information about stores...
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Recommended Reading
Jensen CS, Pedersen TB, Thomsen C. Multidimensional databases and data warehousing, Synthesis lectures on data management. San Rafael: Morgan Claypool; 2010.
Kimball R, Ross M, Thornthwaite W, Mundy J, Becker B. The data warehouse lifecycle toolkit. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Wiley; 2008.
Pedersen TB, Jensen CS, Dyreson CE. A foundation for capturing and querying complex multidimensional data. Inf Syst. 2001;26(5):383–423.
Pedersen TB. Managing complex multidimensional data. In: Aufaure M-A, Zimányi E, editors. Business intelligence – second European Summer School, eBISS 2012, Brussels, Belgium, July 15–21, 2012, tutorial lectures, LNBIB. Brussels: Springer; 2013.
Vaisman A, Zimányi E. Data warehouse systems – design and implementation. Berlin: Springer; 2014.
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Pedersen, T.B. (2018). Dimension. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_886
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