I was once on a project where the users waited on the data warehouse load to complete before going home. The original requirement was that the load take no more than 20 minutes. We were never faster than 90 minutes. After a year trying to get the process to go faster, we made the decision to break from the current design an go with a more efficient approach.
The design change seemed like heresy because it violated data warehousing norms. In the end, we got the process to complete in less than 10 minutes. The key was letting go of conventional design and choosing an approach that addressed the requirements head on. We made the fact tables self-sufficient by stuffing them with data and skipping the stage table.
The Data Warehouse Key Design whitepaper below details the design difference and its impact on the results.
Read more in the whitepaper Key Design.
Question: When have you had to get creative to meet your user’s requirements?