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What is the cleanest way to capture changes between levels in a dimensional hierarchy?

I have the dimensional hierarchy [Area] > [Region] > [Location], where Area is the parent to Region and Region is the parent to Location. Location is lowest level of the hierarchy, and is associated with the fact table.

The business rules are: Locations are able to change the Region they are assigned to based on business need. Furthermore, Regions are able to change the Area they are assigned to.

We want to capture those changes so that when we do historical analysis, we can compare business metrics before and after a Location changed its Region, and a before and after a Region changed its Area.

What is the best way to do this?

The four ways that I have come up with all seem to have major drawbacks:

  1. Using a bridge table between hierarchy levels requires that you use time bounds (effective start/end dates) to correctly identify which parent a child belongs to as you walk up the hierarchy. That makes queries prone to error, especially with hierarchies with many levels.
  2. Versioning a child record whenever its relationship to its parent changes (e.g., versioning Region A when it moves from Area A to Area B) and then cascading that change all the way down the hierarchy (e.g., creating new versions of Locations tied to Region A so that they are tied to the new Region A).
  3. Updating the child record's reference to the parent record, making you use time bounds to reassemble the correct history (prone to error).
  4. Always use time bounds when querying up the hierarchy to make sure Location A is associated with the correct Region (likewise, Region A is associated with the correct Area) for the moment of the fact being analyzed.

None of these seems clean to me.

Is there a better way?

Thanks a lot

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  • I'd use option 2, but instead of versions within the table I'd record changes in an audit table, keeping in your tables always the current version. You could then analyse the audit table to see changes only. A trigger can do this nicely. – Ziggy Crueltyfree Zeitgeister Apr 28 '16 at 2:53
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I highly recommend the 1st option of a bridge table. If you make sure the you capture the historical change on all three tables that would work fine, though I'd agree with you that the JOIN'ing is an issue. Just make sure that (in the JOIN clause) that the DateInserted and ValidTill match the ones that are in the fact table. More about bridge tables in here - Kimball university

ALTERNATIVELY: In the fact table keep references to all three dimension (Area, Region, Location). Since anyway you need to have a DATE on a fact table, you can map the changes easily, and since - as you said- Location could be A for one transaction but B for a different one, you'd be better off this way GROUPing BY and seeing trends and changes. The down side: it will make the fact table fatter.

If you are using SSAS (or intend to use it for data modelling) I recommend the very good read The Many to Many revolution which explains how to implement it to the end user.

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  • Hila, thank you. So is what you're suggesting a flattening of the hierarchy where Area/Region/Location now technically belong on the same level on the fact table, as fact level attributes? So there would be a foreign key in the fact table for each of the three? If so, that is interesting. I suppose that means that if you want to report on the hierarchy, then you have to scan all of the changes to the relationships between Area/Region/Location in the fact table itself... Right? – seadragon Jun 28 '16 at 3:06
  • Since these are the business requirements than yes, that what I would suggest, to flatten the relationship and to to either keep it in the fact table or in a bridge table. Yes, it is counter-intuitive (to what we've learnt in relational databases) but it will provide the best solution for checking data across histories. That was a tough question please read through the other sources I recommended (especially the Many to Many revolution). – Hila DG Jun 28 '16 at 23:41
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If you want to capture historical changes on the three tables you need change hierarchies tables (i.e. [Area], [Region]) into sub-dimensions of the dimension table (i.e. [Location]) by adding an effective_date and expire_date (in the three tables )and you can track changes in dimension and sub-dimension attributes in order to report historical data using Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD) techniques.

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  • Hi Yassine, thanks. I'm quite familiar with the SCD techniques, but this is about tracking the changes to the relationships between hierarchies, to account for when a child (e.g. Location) changes parent (e.g. Region) and we need to see what the before and after of that relationship change. – seadragon Jun 28 '16 at 3:04

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