Star Schema ALL the things! But why?

Perhaps you've seen "Star Schema ALL the things!", "Never use Calculated Columns", or "Bi-Directional relationships suck" before when thinking about design considerations for your data model, but you've never really stopped to think about the specifics behind them and why exactly they could benefit or hurt your model. Who knows, maybe that specific advice doesn't even work out for the scenario at hand and you might not be aware because you've skipped a few steps in the process.

Come along in this journey from source to model to report using a practical mindset, thinking about the design decisions and ramifications along the way. At the core of the session lies the message to think about best practices, with the added step to test, assess, and benchmark what exactly they do for you.

Whether it be the decision of where your transformations need to be done, how exactly the data and tables need to be modelled or what you allow the end users to do with your model these are all important steps to take, preferably without shortcuts. We'll take the steps on a data model, and measure as we move along.

Meaning, at the end of the session we'll have discussed why Star Schema's can help you, and how you can assess for yourselves if they are beneficial for your use case.