How do you handle complex or changing data sources for BI?

1 Understand your data sources

The first step in data modeling is to understand your data sources, their structure, quality, and relationships. You need to identify the data sources that are relevant for your BI goals, and how they can be accessed, extracted, and transformed. You also need to assess the data quality, such as the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of the data, and how to handle any errors, missing values, or duplicates. Finally, you need to understand how the data sources relate to each other, and how to join, merge, or aggregate them to create a unified view of the data.

2 Choose a data modeling approach

The next step is to choose a data modeling approach that suits your data sources and your BI needs. There are different types of data models, such as conceptual, logical, and physical, that represent the data at different levels of abstraction and detail. For BI purposes, the most common data modeling approach is dimensional modeling, which organizes the data into facts and dimensions. Facts are the numerical measures that reflect the business performance, such as sales, revenue, or profit. Dimensions are the attributes that describe the facts, such as product, customer, or time. Dimensional modeling allows for easy and fast analysis of the data, as well as flexibility and scalability.

3 Design your data model

The third step is to design your data model, using the data modeling approach that you have chosen. You need to define the facts and dimensions that are relevant for your BI goals, and how they are related to each other. You also need to decide on the level of granularity, or detail, of the data, and how to handle any hierarchies, aggregations, or calculations. You can use various tools and techniques to design your data model, such as star schema, snowflake schema, or data vault. The key is to ensure that your data model is clear, consistent, and comprehensive.

5 Implement and maintain your data model

The final step is to implement and maintain your data model, to make it available and usable for the BI users and applications. You need to deploy your data model to the data warehouse, data lake, or data mart, where the data will be stored and accessed. You also need to monitor and manage your data model, to ensure that it is up to date, secure, and reliable. You may need to make changes or adjustments to your data model, as the data sources, the BI needs, or the business environment evolve.