The topic of dynamic dimension descriptions isn’t new, but the method for which I’ve come up with is a hybrid of several other methodologies, making for a great subject piece. Using codes and descriptions in your warehouse dimensions is standard practice, even in some cases the use-case may require displaying a code versus a description, for example: displaying USA instead of United States of America, or even in situations where the business understands what a “TPS” report type is more so than the formal “Testing Procedure Specification” description. In any case, you’ll want a method that enables the ability to add and modify additional codes and their descriptions without having to perform risky manual updates to the warehouse.
In this post, I will discuss a rigid yet tolerant way for properly implementing dynamic dimension descriptions without ever directly modifying a warehouse dimensional table. Instead, we’ll implement a lookup table that an end user can insert and update freely, along with a robust ETL process that uses this same lookup table to perform description updates and even type 2 historical tracking, if necessary.
Dynamic Dimension Descriptions Using An ETL Lookup Table
