On Apr 8, 5:02*pm, "David Portas"
<REMOVE_BEFORE_REPLYING_dpor...@acm.org> wrote:
> "Joe" <darwinshams...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:5a38ed1b-62b3-4190-b62c-95198877f594@h1g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
>
> >I found this thread about whether to update fact tables in data
> > warehouses, other than for errors in the data.
>
> >http://groups.google.com/group/micro...er.datawarehou...
>
> > The thread was from 2003, so I thought I would start this one.
>
> > It seems to me that the reason you wouldn't update data in a data
> > warehouse is that each row represents an event, and if the data has to
> > be updated later on to reflect something that was unknown when the
> > record was created, it was probably because a new event has occured to
> > create the piece of data.
>
> > Any thoughts?
>
> If an update is needed to produce some correct and useful result then do the
> update. Unless you have some specific data model or universe of discourse in
> mind I don't see any other basis for saying whether an update is appropriate
> or not.
>
> --
> David Portas

This article doesn't have quite the approach I was thinking of, but
does show how to handle late arriving facts without updating the fact
table.

http://www.kimballgroup.com/html/des...ensionRows.pdf

Joe