Design of a dimensional database for materials data

The Indian Material Database (IMDB) is a national project aiming to develop a database through compilation of materials property data available in different laboratories in India. Selecting the appropriate data modeling technique is crucial for the successful deployment of such a system. Dimensional modeling is a logical design technique that seeks to present the data in a standard, intuitive framework that allows for high-performance access. Dimensional modeling of data results in a ‘star schema’, where the data constitutes a central fact table surrounded by dimension tables. This paper discusses the model and architecture of the material database using a ‘snowflake schema’ which is a variation of ‘star schema’, where some of the dimensions are normalized into multiple related tables. The database contains a central fact table linked to multiple dimension tables, each of which corresponding to one of the following dimensions 1) the materials 2) the material properties which are studied 3) specifications of the experiments conducted on materials and 4) the source from which data is obtained.

[1]  W. H. Inmon,et al.  Building the data warehouse , 1992 .

[2]  Matteo Golfarelli,et al.  Conceptual design of data warehouses from E/R schemes , 1998, Proceedings of the Thirty-First Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[3]  Tim Martyn,et al.  Reconsidering Multi-Dimensional schemas , 2004, SGMD.

[4]  Daniel L. Moody,et al.  From enterprise models to dimensional models: a methodology for data warehouse and data mart design , 2000, DMDW.

[5]  Il-Yeol Song,et al.  Dimensional modeling: Identification, classification, and evaluation of patterns , 2008, Decis. Support Syst..

[6]  Daniel L. Moody,et al.  From ER Models to Dimensional Models: Bridging the Gap between OLTP and OLAP Design, Part I , 2003 .

[7]  Ralph Kimball,et al.  A dimensional modeling manifesto , 1997 .

[8]  Ralph Kimball,et al.  The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit: Expert Methods for Designing, Developing and Deploying Data Warehouses with CD Rom , 1998 .

[9]  Matteo Golfarelli,et al.  Designing the Data Warehouse: Key Steps and Crucial Issues , 1999 .

[10]  Il-Yeol Song,et al.  An Analysis of Many-to-Many Relationships Between Fact and Dimension Tables in Dimensional Modeling , 2001, DMDW.

[11]  Mark Levene,et al.  Why is the snowflake schema a good data warehouse design? , 2003, Inf. Syst..

[12]  Joseph M. Firestone.  Dimensional Object Modeling , 1998 .

[13]  Maria Luiza Machado Campos,et al.  Getting Users Involved in the Development of Data Warehouse Applications , 2002, DMDW.

[14]  Matteo Golfarelli,et al.  The Dimensional Fact Model: A Conceptual Model for Data Warehouses , 1998, Int. J. Cooperative Inf. Syst..

[15]  Ralph Kimball,et al.  The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit , 2009 .