Incremental fact update concept

• blackholl20

  Newbie

  Points: 3

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  August 18, 2012 at 1:52 am

  #260222

  Hi,

  My source table is Transactions, which has ID, Value and Date, It reflects history of transactions.

  My fact holds transactions time frame, each row has ID, Value, StartDate and EndDate.

  The incremental process takes the delta transactions.

  In first run Transactions table is:

  Transactions: ID: 1, Value: 500, Date: 2012-08-01

  The incremental process takes this single row to staging and copy to fact:

  Fact: ID: 1, Value: 500, StartDate: 2012-08-01, EndDate: NULL

  In second run Transactions table is:

  Transactions: ID: 1, Value: 500, Date: 2012-08-01

  Transactions: ID: 1, Value: 600, Date: 2012-08-02

  The incremental process takes the second row to staging and copy this row to the fact:

  Fact: ID: 1, Value: 500, StartDate: 2012-08-01, EndDate: NULL

  Fact: ID: 1, Value: 600, StartDate: 2012-08-02, EndDate: NULL

  BUT the EndDate of the first row should be update as well:

  Fact: ID: 1, Value: 500, StartDate: 2012-08-01, EndDate: 2012-08-02

  Fact: ID: 1, Value: 600, StartDate: 2012-08-02, EndDate: NULL

  Now, the question is:

  Should all FACT retro change rows (those records that exist in FACT but not in the incremental delta records but still needs to get update in FACT) get into STAGING table first (extract), get update (transform), and then to return to FACT (load)? If yes - should it get from source table or from FACT table?

  Should this update should be done directly on the FACT (update previous row EndDate with next row StartDate)?

  Thanks in advance!