Box 1: Denormalize to a second normal form

Denormalization is the process of transforming higher normal forms to lower normal forms via storing the join of higher normal form relations as a base relation. Denormalization increases the performance in data retrieval at cost of bringing update anomalies to a database.

Box 2: New identity columns

The collapsing relations strategy can be used in this step to collapse classification entities into component entities to obtain flat dimension tables with single-part keys that connect directly to the fact table. The single-part key is a surrogate key generated to ensure it remains unique over time.

Example:

Note: A surrogate key on a table is a column with a unique identifier for each row. The key is not generated from the table data. Data modelers like to create surrogate keys on their tables when they design data warehouse models. You can use the IDENTITY property to achieve this goal simply and effectively without affecting load performance.