Paul Mullen

Kimball modelling is a dimensional modelling technique for reorganising operational data into facts and dimensions – representing a star schema. This methodology has been an industry standard for decades despite the technological landscape changing so drastically. Data Build Tool (DBT) is a framework for building database objects via SQL and orchestrating dependencies between them. The DBT framework is a database agnostic toolset which can declare what the data models are and how they should be built. As the technological landscape has changed over time classic technical assumptions around data modelling can no longer be taken as fact, and modelling techniques need to be considered carefully. This talk will introduce the technologies used and then provide a series of case studies looking at modelling techniques brought out of the Kimball methodology and how they were applied to a DBT-Snowflake architecture. Brief consideration will also be given to different technologies which could fulfil this approach. Attendees would benefit from having some familiarity with data modelling and being involved in data transformation work.