Ever since Ralph Kimball, the guru of dimensional modeling, announced his retirement, it has felt like the end of an era. He was among the first data warehousing/business intelligence pioneers some 20 years ago and although there has been much advancement in the field since then, his dimensional modeling principles are still strongly rooted and widely used even today.
Dimensional modeling is easy to understand because it clearly represents measures that are used in business and dimensions by which we analyze them. The dimensional data model can be shared with business users which allows better alignment between the technical implementation and the intended use. However, dimensional modeling is best suited for relational or OLAP databases. In order keep up with big data trends we should examine how to extend dimensional modeling to make it fit with the latest trends. This article was first published in MonitorPro magazine, VI. 2015, p. 34-35