I am asking for help on the following topic. I am trying to create an ETL process with two Excel data sources (S1 ~300 rows and S2 ~7000 rows). S1 contains project information and employee details and S2 contains the amount of hours, which each employee worked in which project at a timestamp.
I want to insert the amount of hours, which each employee worked in each project at a timestamp, into the fact table by referencing to the existing primary keys in the dimension tables. If an entry is not present in the dimension tables already, i want to add a new entry first and use the newly generated id. The destination table structure looks as follows (Data Warehouse, Star Schema):Destination Table Structure
In SSIS, i created three Data Flow tasks for filling the Dimension Tables (project, employee and time) with distinct values (using group by, as S1 and S2 contain a lot of duplicate rows)first, and a fourth data flow task (see image below) to insert the FactTable data, and this is where I'm running into problems:
Data Flow Task FactTable
I am using three LookUp functions to retrieve the foreignKeys project_id, employee_id and time_id from the Dimension tables (using project name, employee number and timestamp). If the id is found, it is passed on all the way to Merge Join 1, if not, a new Dimension Entry is created (lets say project) and the generated project_id passed on instead. Same goes for employee and time respectively.
There is two issues with this:
1) The "amount of hours" (passed by Multicast four, see image above) is not matched in the final result (No Match)
2) The amount of rows being inserted keeps increasing forever (Endless Join, I belive due to the Merge joins).
What I've tried:
I have used one UNION instead of three Merge Joins before, but this resulted in the foreign keys being in seperate rows each, instead of merged together.
I used Merge (instead of Merge Join) and combined the join as well as sort conditions in as I fell all possible ways.
I understand that this scenario might be confusing for everybody else, but thank your for taking time looking at it! Any help is greatly appreciated.
Solved it
For anybody having similar issues:
Seperate Data Flows for filling Dimension Tables with those filling Fact Tables will do the trick.
Its a clean solution and easier to debug.
Also: Dont run the LookUp Functions in parallel, but rather one after each other and pass on the attributes. Saves unnecessary Merges as well.
So as a Sum Up:
Four Data Flow Tasks, three for filling dimension tables ONLY and one for filling fact tables ONLY.
Loading Multiple Tables using SSIS keeping foreign key relationships
The answer posted by onupdatecascade is basically it.
Good luck!
Related
I have a too complicated task for me, and hope someone can help me :)
I have two different structures, containing data about products:
1.
products with product_id, brand_id (products that I have)
products_sku with product_id, sku_id, vendor_code (SKUs for products)
products_avail with sku_id, scheme_id, quantity (availability for each product sku and scheme)
products_external with product_id_e, brand_id_e, vendor_code_e, sku_id_e
products_avail_external with product_id_e, quantity_e, scheme_id_e
Each SKU identified by (brand_id, vendor_code) pair, so one product from (2) corresponds to one SKU from (1). Also I can have several availability entries for different schemes. Availability records can count up to tens of millions records.
Field sku_id_e in (2) updates with cron task, so if it defined (i.e. not zero) - I can find corresponding record in (1).
I need to get all records from (2) with sku_id_e defined, group them by (sku_id_e, scheme_id_e) and make a set of records in (1), so one records will contain SUM(quantity) of all records with some (sku_id_e, scheme_id_e).
I can do UPSERT but in this case I will waste sequence numbers (which is problem in my case because request will be executed relatively frequently and on massive number of records).
I can use something like ON EMPTY or NOT EXISTS, but this is too complicated for me to combine in one request.
I can just select both datasets and make matching programmatically, but this is definitely not best solution.
Can you help me with making SQL code that will update records in (1) or insert them if such records does not exists (not wasting sequence)?
Thank you in advance!
I am working on combining 2 tables with different types of patient information using the PID (Patient Identity) feature present in both tables. Usually the function "join" (https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/table.join.html) does the trick when one of the tables have information on all the patients from the other one. But in my case, both tables have certain values of PID (or information for new patients) that isn't present in the other one. How do I create a new table for using patient info from both tables that only contains info on the patients present in both tables?
I could probably write some long, clunky code to do this manually, but I was wondering if there's a function (or a few functions) that can do the task more efficiently. Thank you
The solution is to use either innerjoin or outerjoin.
I have a simple query which make a GROUP BY using two fields:
#facturas =
SELECT a.CodFactura,
Convert.ToInt32(a.Fecha.ToString("yyyyMMdd")) AS DateKey,
SUM(a.Consumo) AS Consumo
FROM #table_facturas AS a
GROUP BY a.CodFactura, a.DateKey;
#table_facturas has 4100 rows but query takes several minutes to finish. Seeing the graph explorer I see it uses 2500 vertices because I'm having 2500 CodFactura+DateKey unique rows. I don't know if it normal ADAL behaviour. Is there any way to reduce the vertices number and execute this query faster?
First: I am not sure your query actually will compile. You would need the Convert expression in your GROUP BY or do it in a previous SELECT statement.
Secondly: In order to answer your question, we would need to know how the full query is defined. Where does #table_facturas come from? How was it produced?
Without this information, I can only give some wild speculative guesses:
If #table_facturas is coming from an actual U-SQL Table, your table is over partitioned/fragmented. This could be because:
you inserted a lot of data originally with a distribution on the grouping columns and you either have a predicate that reduces the number of rows per partition and/or you do not have uptodate statistics (run CREATE STATISTICS on the columns).
you did a lot of INSERT statements, each inserting a small number of rows into the table, thus creating a big number of individual files. This will "scale-out" the processing as well. Use ALTER TABLE REBUILD to recompact.
If it is coming from a fileset, you may have too many small files in the input. See if you can merge them into less, larger files.
You can also try to hint a small number of rows in your query that creates #table_facturas if the above does not help by adding OPTION(ROWCOUNT=4000).
I am in the early stages of creating a Data Warehouse based loosely on the Kimball methodology.
I am currently investigating my source data. I understand by the adding of a Primary key (not a natural key) this will then allow me to make the connections between the facts and dimensions.
Sounds like a silly question but how exactly is this done? Are there any good articles that run through this process?
I would imagine we bring in all of the Dimensions first. And when the fact data is brought over a lookup is performed that "pushes" the Foreign key into the Fact table? At what point is this done? Within SSIS whats is the "best practice" method? Is this all done in one package for example?
Is that roughly how it happens?
In this case do we have to be particularly careful in what order we load our data, or we could be loading facts for which there is no corresponding dimension?
I would imagine we bring in all of the Dimensions first. And when the
fact data is brought over a lookup is performed that "pushes" the
Foreign key into the Fact table? At what point is this done? Within
SSIS whats is the "best practice" method? Is this all done in one
package for example?
It would depend on your schema and table design.
Assuming it's star schema and the FK is based on the data value itself:
DIM1 <- FACT1 -> DIM2
^
|
FACT2 -> DIM3
you'll first fill DIM1 and DIM2 before inserting into FACT1 as you would need the FK.
Assuming it's snowflake schema:
DIM1_1
^
|
DIM1 <- FACT1 -> DIM2
you'll first fill DIM1_1 then DIM1 and DIM2 before inserting into FACT1.
Assuming the FK relation is based on something else (mostly a number) instead of the data value itself (kinda an optimization when dealing with huge amount of data and/or strings as dimension values), you won't need to wait until you insert the data into DIM table. I'm sure it's very confusing :), so I'll try to explain in short. The steps involved would be something like (assume a simple star schema with 2 tables, FACT1 and DIMENSION1):
Extract FACT and DIMENSION values from the data set you are processing.
Generate a unique number based on the DIMENSION's value (which say is a string), using a reproducible algorithm (e.g. SHA1, given same string, it always gives same number).
Insert into FACT1 table, the number and FACT values.
Insert into DIMENSION1 table, the number and DIMENSION values.
Steps 3 & 4 can be done in parallel. as long as there is NO constraint in place. A join on a numeric column would be more efficient than one of a string.
And there is no need to store the mapping for #2 because it's reproducible (just ensure you pick the right algo).
Obviously this can be extended for snowflake schema and/or multiple dimensions.
HTH
I have a table that has around 40 columns. The only difference in the columns names is that the last 20 all start with "B" before the column name. This table is used for comparing. In other words, compare the data in the first 20 columns to the data in the last 20 columns.
I know this is very bad design, so how should this table be redesigned, so that there are only 20 columns, yet we can still compare the data?
EDIT: if it helps, we also use this data to find a matched cohort
Also note that performance is of main concern here. By duplicating the columns the getting of data is extremely fast.
Thanks!
Two possible architectures and a query tip.
1) Build your table with a "Type" column, and use that to flag "primary" vs. "alternate". In your case, "A" vs. "B" might be appropriate.
2) Build a vertical partition, two identical tables (for primary and alternate data), that share a common primary key. (If Id = 42 is in one table, it must be in the other--unless "alternate" data is optional, in which case don't populate the second table.) Also optionally, have a third table that tracks all possible primary keys, along with any data that is known to always be common to both tables.
Tip: Read up on SELECT...EXCEPT and SELECT...INTERSECT. They run disturbingly quickly, and are idea for comparing all columns and rows between two datasets for differences (except) and matches (intersect). You can use this fairly easily with either of the two structures, and it would work with your existing code as well (though it might be fussier to write the query).