Star vs. Snowflake Schemas: Trade-offs
Tests your grasp of data warehouse design trade-offs. Define star (denormalized, fast queries) and snowflake (normalized, storage efficient) schemas. Explain the core trade-off: star's query speed vs. snowflake's storage/integrity.
This tests your understanding of data warehouse design and the trade-offs between query performance and data integrity. A strong answer defines star schemas (central fact table, denormalized dimensions) and snowflake schemas (normalized dimensions). It then explains the key trade-off: star schemas offer faster queries with fewer joins, while snowflake schemas save storage and reduce redundancy at the cost of query complexity. A red flag is describing them without explaining the practical implications or why you'd choose one over the other.
Read the original → Wikipedia: Star schema
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