Welsh Corgi (3/24/2012)
Could someone please help me explain to a nontechnical person why it is bad practice to use the Natural Keys from the source systems as the Primary key that relates to the Fact Table?I appreciate any input on this topic.
Not really easy to explain this to a non-technical person; at the end of the day you will have to say - in a polite way - that there are best practices on the industry and the company hired you to apply such best practices.
Having said that, IBM has done a good job detailing the main reason why to use surrogate keys on dimensional modeling, please check http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/rdahelp/v7r5/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.datatools.dimensional.ui.doc%2Ftopics%2Fc_dm_surrogatekeys.html
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Pablo (Paul) Berzukov
Author of Understanding Database Administration available at Amazon and other bookstores.
Disclaimer: Advice is provided to the best of my knowledge but no implicit or explicit warranties are provided. Since the advisor explicitly encourages testing any and all suggestions on a test non-production environment advisor should not held liable or responsible for any actions taken based on the given advice.