CGS2544

Instructor: Meg McManus

Homework Assignment 3 Chapter 9

1. (21 points, 3 points ea) Contrast the following terms: a. transient data; periodic data b. data warehouse; data mart; operational data store c. reconciled data; derived data d. fact table; dimension table e. star schema; snowflake schema f. independent data mart; dependent data mart; logical data mart g. SQL; NoSQL (10 points, 2 points ea) List the five (5) major trends that necessitate data warehousing in many organizations today. (9 points, 3 points ea) List three types of metadata that appear in a three-layer data warehouse architecture, and briefly describe the purpose of each type: (8 points, 2 points ea) List four (4) characteristics of a data warehouse: (14 points, 2 points ea) For independent data marts: List five (5) claimed limitations and two (2) claimed benefits. (8 points, 2 points ea) List four objectives of derived data.

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Instructor: Meg McManus

(30 points, 5 points ea) Millennium College wants you to help design a star schema to record grades for courses completed by students. There are four dimension tables, with attributes as follows: CourseSection Attributes: CourseID, SectionNumber, CourseName, Units, RoomID, and RoomCapacity During a given semester, the college offers an average of 500 course sections. Attributes: ProfID, ProfName, Title, DepartmentID, and DepartmentName There are typically 200 professors at Millennium at any given time Attributes: StudentID, StudentName, and Major Each course section has an average of 40 students, and students typically take five courses per period Attributes: SemesterID and Year The database will contain data for 30 periods (a total of 10 years).

Professor

Student

Period

The only fact that is to be recorded in the fact table is CourseGrade. a. Design a star schema for this problem. (See Figure 9-10 for the format you should follow. b. Estimate the number of rows in the fact table, using the assumptions stated previously. c. Estimate the total size of the fact table (in bytes), assuming that each field has an average of 5 bytes. d. If you didnt want to or didnt have to stick with a strict star schema for this data mart, how would you change the design? Why? e. Various characteristics of sections, professors, and students change over time. How do you propose designing the star schema to allow for these changes? Why? f. ThenHaving mastered the principles of normalization described in Chapter 4, you recognize immediately that the star schema you developed for Millennium College is not in third normal form. Using these principles, convert the star schema to

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CGS2544

Instructor: Meg McManus a snowflake schema. What impact (if any) does this have on the size of the fact table for this problem?

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