Packt+ | Advance your knowledge in tech

You're reading from Learning Pentaho Data Integration 8 CE An end-to-end guide to exploring, transforming, and integrating your data across multiple sources

Product type Paperback

Published in Dec 2017

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781788292436

Length 500 pages

Edition 3rd Edition

Languages

Java

Tools

Pentaho

Concepts

Data Processing

Author (1):

María Carina Roldán

View More author details

Table of Contents (17) Chapters

Preface

1. Getting Started with Pentaho Data Integration

2. Getting Started with Transformations FREE CHAPTER

3. Creating Basic Task Flows

4. Reading and Writing Files

5. Manipulating PDI Data and Metadata

6. Controlling the Flow of Data

7. Cleansing, Validating, and Fixing Data

8. Manipulating Data by Coding

9. Transforming the Dataset

10. Performing Basic Operations with Databases

11. Loading Data Marts with PDI

12. Creating Portable and Reusable Transformations

13. Implementing Metadata Injection

14. Creating Advanced Jobs

15. Launching Transformations and Jobs from the Command Line

16. Best Practices for Designing and Deploying a PDI Project

Loading fact tables

Fact tables contain the central information of star models. In this section, you will learn to load these kinds of tables. This is the list of topics covered:

Introducing different kinds of fact tables
Translating business keys into surrogate keys
Loading fact tables with PDI

Learning the basics about fact tables

As explained in the introduction, fact tables are the central tables in a dimensional model. While the dimensions serve to group, filter, and describe data, the fact tables contain the measures of the business. There are basically two types of fact tables:

Cumulative: They describe what happened over a period of time—a Sales fact table is a typical example of this. The measures for these types of fact tables are mostly additive, that is, measures that can be added across all dimensions.
Snapshots: They describe the activity of a business process, with pictures taken at a given instant of time. Examples of this kind of fact table are postal tracking systems, order processing...