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Configuring Slowly Changing Dimensions

The Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse provides Type II slowly changing dimension (SCD) functionality, which allows you to track the history of updates to dimension records. When a record in the Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse has an update, the updated information is posted into a new row and the old information is kept for historical reporting purposes.

The Oracle Business Analytics Warehouse identifies and applies the slowly changing dimension logic chosen by the user after data has been extracted and transformed to be source-independent, as shown in Figure 16. Users may configure Oracle BI Applications to support both Type I SCDs, in which data is overwritten with updates, and Type II SCDs, in which the original records are maintained while a new record stores the updated data. Choosing Type I or Type II SCDs depends on identifying your historically significant attributes.

By default, all dimensions are using Type I updates. If you need change a dimension to Type II SCD update, follow the procedure below.

To turn a dimension to Type II SCD update enabled

1. In the parameter file parameterfileDW.txt located under Informatica PowerCenter 7.1.4\Server\SrcFiles

2. Locate the parameter section for the SIL_* mapping which load this dimension.

3. Set the $$TYPE2_FLG to 'Y'.