The Data Vault system is an alternative approach to modeling an enterprise data warehouse that has been gaining popularity among organizations.
The Data Vault data warehouse architecture was invented by Dan Linstedt to provide an alternative to the traditional data warehouse modeling approach that includes developing 3rd Normal Form (3NF) type models or dimensional star schema models. The data vault methodology seeks to improve the efficiency of data ingestion and the flexibility of structure changes. For more information about Data Vaults, please refer to Dan Linstedt's website (http://danlinstedt.com/solutions-2/data-vault-basics/).
WhereScape RED has been enhanced to expand its current Data Vault functionality and provide improved automation for creating and managing Data Vault objects in WhereScape RED managed Data Warehouses. This includes the following:
- DSS columns for Load tables
- Wizard for Hash key generation
- Wizard for building Hub, Link and Satellite tables
- Templates for Procedure generation
All these enhancements are designed to be compliant with Data Vault 2.0 standards and are described in the succeeding sections below.
Note that previous releases of WhereScape RED used a workflow for Data Vault objects that is similar to the workflow for creating Data Store Objects. The Hub, Link and Satellite tables are based on standard Load or Stage tables (that do not include the hash key column type flags), WhereScape RED reverts to this behavior and the resulting procedures are generated by internal WhereScape RED automation and not via templates.
If the above legacy method of creating Data Vault Objects is required, please refer to the Data Store Objects chapter of this User Guide. You can also refer to the older versions of this User Guide, for details on the previous processes used to import Data Vault objects into WhereScape RED.
For more information on Data Vault design, refer to Building a Scalable Data Warehouse With Data Vault 2.0 by Daniel Linstedt and Michael Olschimke.