After identifying the business processes in each data domain, define the dimensions and build a bus matrix.
Define dimensions
When you partition data domains and build a bus matrix, you define dimensions by analyzing business processes. This tutorial uses the marketing operations of an e-commerce company, Company A, as an example. In the transaction data domain, this tutorial focuses on the business process for confirming receipt, which indicates a successful transaction.
The business process for confirming receipt depends on two main dimensions: product and delivery location. This tutorial assumes the delivery and purchase locations are the same. The product dimension has the following attributes:
Product ID (primary key)
Product name
Product transaction price
Product condition: 1 for New, 2 for Unused, 3 for Used
Product category ID
Product category name
Category ID
Category name
Buyer ID
Product status: 0 for Normal, 1 for Deleted, 2 for Delisted, 3 for Never listed
Product city
Product province
The region dimension has the following attributes:
City code
City name
Province code
Province name
A core principle of dimensional modeling is to ensure that each dimension is unique within the enterprise data warehouse. For example, Company A can have only one definition for the product dimension. The province code dimension, for instance, must convey the same information across all business processes.
Build a bus matrix
After you identify the business processes in each data domain, you can build the bus matrix. The matrix maps business processes to their related dimensions. The following table is an example of a bus matrix for the transaction feature of Company A's e-commerce business. It includes dimensions such as purchase province, purchase city, category name, category ID, brand name, brand ID, product name, product ID, and transaction amount.
Data Domain/Process | Conformed Dimensions | |||||||||
Purchase Province | Purchase City | Category ID | Category Name | Brand ID | Brand Name | Product ID | Product Name | Transaction Amount | ||
Transaction | Place Order | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N |
Payment | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | |
Shipment | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | |
Confirm Receipt | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | |
Y indicates that the dimension is included. N indicates that the dimension is not included.