The Data warehouse physical data model describes how the model will be built in the database. A physical database model shows all table structures, including column name, column data type, column constraints, primary key, foreign key, and relationships between tables.
Read:
- Data Warehouse Project Life Cycle and Design
- Star Schema model in Data Warehouse
- Snowflake Schem Model in Data Warehouse
- Step by Step Guide to Dimensional Data Modeling
- Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD) in Data Warehouse
- Rapidly Changing Dimension in Data Warehouse
Features of Data Warehouse Physical Data Model
Following are the features of conceptual Physical model:
- In this model you will Specify all tables and columns that are available in the model
- You will use the foreign keys to identify relationships between tables in the model
- You may want to denormalize tables based on user requirements. Denormalization will speed up the data retrieval mechanism
- Physical considerations may cause the physical data model to be quite different from the logical data model
- Physical data model will be different for different RDBMS. For example, RDBMS like Oracle, SQL use the Primary and foreign keys whereas Netezza does not use. You may want to generate the tabe structure specific to that RDBMS
Schematic Representation of Data Warehouse Physical Data Model
The figure below is an example of a physical data model.
From the above diagram you can see that, data warehouse physical model describes how the tables are actually created in the data warehouse environment.
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