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snowflake schema

/ˈsnoʊ.fleɪk ˈskiː.mə/ - n.

1 [colloq.] What a star schema becomes after each team adds the one extra table that only their report needs.Keep. Punchy.This is the problem.

Working definition

2. A star schema whose dimensions are normalized into additional related tables, reducing redundancy at the cost of more joins.

Filed

See also

dimension tableWhere the company keeps every adjective it has ever applied to a customer, none of them governed.
normalizationStoring each fact exactly once so that no one can find it, then joining nine tables to prove it was there all along.
star schemaA clean diagram at the center of the deck, surrounded on all sides by the joins that did not fit on the slide.