Targit BI – Drill down over multiple dimension tables
Targit BI is limited in drilling through data where the data is stored over multiple dimension tables.
For example, look at my star schema, beautiful isn’t it?
Targit BI star schema
Let’s say you get a request from the President of the company, that he wants to see a list of customer sales, with the ability to drill into the products that we sold to those customers. Targit BI is the BI tool that you inherited when you took the job, so until you come up with some comparison data on why Targit BI isn’t the best tool for your company, then you have to suck it up and try to get this request done.
Since we all read, loved, and keep a copy of “The Data Warehouse Toolkit” on our desks at all times, we need to keep this post from getting to Mr. Kimball, not Detective John Kimble from Kindergarten Cop on all those sound boards you use to play when you were a kid.
Wait, you haven’t read “The Data Warehouse Toolkit”?
Here it is…. The Data Warehouse Toolkit
What, you never heard of Detective John Kimble in Kindergarten Cop?
Here he is… Detective John Kimble
Ok, so this is what we’re trying to accomplish; a drill down effect over multiple dimensions… DimCustomer and DimProduct.
Ok, Detective John Kimble, I mean Dr. Ralph Kimball Follower Data Warehouse Star Schema inventors (Real Men of Genius Theme playing in background), forgive me. In order to get his effect in Targit BI, you’ll have to create a dimension table that contains all of the distinct customers and products.
I know what you’re going to say…
“This kills performance.”
“Now I have to load a dimension table with N million records.”
“There has to be another way!”
“This goes against everything Detective John Kimble taught us!”
I get it… There is no other way to do this in Targit BI with a Star Schema, and you definitely spent too much time on the John Kimble sound board I gave you.
There is an easier way to report all of this without Targit BI, but have a good time trying to convince top managers who seem to think that Excel Pivot Tables are a “step backwards” in BI reporting. This exact functionality can be done by creating a connection to your cube through Excel 2007/2010, and getting that “drill down across multiple dimension feature”, without building a huge table to make it work in Targit BI.
Now, why did we buy Targit BI? Less Clicks?
