Handle slowly changing dimensions with SSIS 2005 wizard

Slowly changing dimensions are a part of almost every data warehouse. Rarely does one see dimensions whose member values remain constant. For example, customer dimension attributes such as last name, occupation, home address and others are likely to change from time to time. Some changes are relatively minor. For example, if the department name changes from "marketing" to "marketing and sales," you probably won't need to track the history of changes. However, the adjustments history of customers' income level or income-to-debt ratio can be very significant for financial organizations that sell consumer loans. In such cases, data ware

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house architects must come up with a way of tracking the changes.

There are multiple methods for maintaining changes in dimensions member values, but here are the most commonly used methods:

Here's how the Slowly Changing Dimensions Wizard works in SSIS and what it can do for a data warehouse architect:

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Changes in AccountDescription column, on the other hand, do not create a new row – they simply overwrite the existing value:

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As I mentioned at the beginning of this tip, there are other methods for maintaining slowly changing dimensions in your data warehouse that are not available through the wizard. However, the ability to implement type 1 and type 2 slowly changing dimensions by virtue of a few clicks within SSIS certainly could speed up ETL development.

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