Excel used to be the poor schmuck’s database, with spreadsheets that just sort of sat there. You could create something more sophisticated with LOOKUP functions, but they were a huge hassle to set up.

When working on a multidimensional design, every fact table within scope should be handled with care. In an ideal world, each low-level fact table represents the metrics related to a business event.

Although tables in SQL databases typically contain massive amounts of data, they’re not always in a format that can be used by data analysts. The data records in these tables need to be filtered ...

Occasionally the database under design becomes more than a one-off project. For example, the data mart or data warehouse might act as a profit center for the organization, and as a solution sold to ...