Exploring Slowly Changing Dimensions in Data Warehousing

In the field of data management, the ability to effectively organize, store, and analyze information is crucial for businesses to make informed decisions. At the core of this practice lies data warehousing, a pivotal component for enterprises aiming to extract valuable insights from vast pools of data. A data warehouse acts as a central repository where data from various sources is consolidated, transformed, and made available for analysis and reporting. This process is not just about storing massive amounts of data; it's about structuring it in a way that makes it easily accessible and meaningful for business intelligence.

What Are Dimensions?

One of the key concepts in data warehousing is the idea of dimensions. Dimensions are the descriptive attributes (like time, geography, products, etc.) that provide context to numerical (facts) measures (like sales, costs, etc.) in a data warehouse.

In an ideal world, these dimensions would be static. However, in the real world, dimensions change over time. This is where the concept of Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCDs) comes into play. SCDs are dimensions that have data that slowly changes over time, rather than changing on a regular schedule, transaction by transaction, or not at all. These changes could be as simple as updating a last name due to marriage or as complex as tracking historical data for a product whose price changes over time.

The management of SCDs is crucial as it directly impacts the accuracy and integrity of data within the warehouse. Proper handling of these changes ensures that historical data is preserved correctly and that the current data is accurate and relevant, thus enabling businesses to make better, data-driven decisions.

In the following sections, we'll delve deeper into the types of SCDs, their significance, and challenges in their management.

Types of Slowly Changing Dimensions

Type 1: Overwriting Old Data

In Type 1 SCD, when a dimension attribute changes, the old value is overwritten with the new value. This approach does not maintain historical data. This makes it suitable for cases where we do not need to track the historical value of a field.

For example, in the above dimension table, the address is a Type 1 SCD field. Here, Michael's address is overwritten to his new address. Therefore, in the dimension table, we lose the old value of the address.

Type 2: Keeping History by Adding New Rows

Type 2 SCDs handle changes by adding new records to the dimension table, keeping the old records intact. This method preserves a full history of data changes, ideal for tracking significant changes over time. Imagine in the example above we wanted to retain the historical values of the addresses. 

One way to achieve this would be to add a new field called "version," which gets incremented with every update to the row. In this example, we have added a new row to the dimension table with Michael's new address while retaining his old address as well. 

While this approach is able to successfully maintain historical values, it is important to note that this would require the query to take into consideration that there may be multiple addresses returned for a single user. If they needed the latest addresses, they could do so by fetching the address corresponding to the most recent version for that user. Another thing to note is that this table will get bigger over time. Therefore, if the dimension fields have high fidelity, this may not be a good option. However, this depends on a lot of other factors like the choice of data warehouse/data lake.

Type 3: Add New Columns

This type involves adding new columns for tracking changes, with the original column retaining the original value and a new column for the updated value. 

For the same example, here we have created two columns, primary address, and secondary address, to track the updated value. Although this might work for some use cases, it requires us to add a new column for every new updated value. It's useful for scenarios where the history is limited to tracking the last change only.

Type 4: Using History Table

Type 4 SCDs use separate history tables to store changes. The original data is kept in a main table, and changes are stored in a secondary table, enabling efficient querying and historical tracking.

Here, we have created an auxiliary table to track the historical changes to the addresses of users. This can be linked back to the user dimension table using foreign keys. The version field tracks what is the latest version of a given address. 

Type 6: Hybrid Approach

Type 6 is a hybrid approach that combines aspects of Types 1, 2, and 3. It might include maintaining original and current values and time-based tracking, suitable for complex scenarios requiring detailed historical tracking and current data efficiency.

Modern Approaches to SCD

Maxime Beauchemin has proposed a fresh perspective that differs from traditional types like those proposed by Kimball. Over time, the affordability of storage and computing power has enabled us to think of other ways of effectively implementing SCDs.

Here are the key elements of Beauchemin's approach:

Snapshotting Dimensional Data

Beauchemin suggests taking daily snapshots of all dimensional data in the data warehouse. This is achieved by using table partitions to segment dimensional tables and employing ETL tools, like Airflow, to create and copy new daily table partitions. These act as snapshots of the dimensional data. This way, we store the historical values for the dimensional tables without complex implementations proposed in earlier types.

Here are some of the rationales behind this approach.

Computing and Storage Costs

The approach is based on the principle that computing and storage are now relatively cheap resources, making it more cost-effective to use additional computing power for analytics instead of investing heavily in manual labor for data modeling.

Simplicity of Dimensional Data

Dimensional data is typically smaller and simpler compared to fact data. This means that maintaining snapshots, even for extended periods, is not overly taxing on modern data warehouse systems.

Ease of Analysis and Perfect Reproducibility

Using snapshots provides analysts with an easier mental model for reasoning about the data compared to traditional methods used for handling Type 2 or Type 3 SCDs. It also ensures perfect reproducibility of data over time, which is a significant advantage for analytical consistency and accuracy.

Conclusion

As we've explored, the management of Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCDs) is a nuanced and evolving aspect of data warehousing. From the foundational types classified by Kimball to the innovative, snapshot-based approach, SCDs remain a vital component. The evolution from traditional to modern methods reflects the ongoing advancements in technology and the growing needs of businesses to efficiently process and analyze data. Understanding and implementing these varied approaches enables organizations to harness the full potential of their data, driving insightful and data-driven decision-making in an ever-changing landscape.