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About the Dimension Key Resolution Process for Universal Source

Dimension keys uniquely identify each record in a dimension table. The purpose of dimension keys is to relate a record in the dimension table to a record in the fact table. Therefore, the dimension key must be stored in both the dimension table and the fact table and resolved using the dimension table's INTEGRATION_ID and DATASOURCE_NUM_ID column values.

For universal business adapters, users supply the dimension INTEGRATION_ID and DATASOURCE_NUM_ID column values through a flat file interface. The same values for INTEGRATION_ID and DATASOURCE_NUM_ID are expected in both the dimension and fact business adapters so that the correct dimension key is resolved and loaded into the fact table.

The dimension key resolution process entails two steps:

1. Run the dimension table workflows to extract and load dimension records.

   The dimension load mapping automatically creates a surrogate key for each record in the dimension table. This surrogate key value populates the dimension table's primary key column, which is referred to as the dimension WID. Similar to the INTEGRATION_ID column, which uniquely identifies the record within the source system, the dimension key uniquely identifies the record in the data warehouse dimension table.

2. Run the fact table workflows to extract and load fact records.

   Records must contain the dimension ID column values for each fact record; these values must be the same values as the INTEGRATION_ID in the corresponding dimension tables.

The following sections describe these two steps in more detail by taking the example of one fact table (W_REP_ACTIVITY_F) and one dimension table (W_EVENT_TYPE_D). However, this process applies to all fact and dimension tables joined by a dimension key.