DIMENSION Objects

One of the very first things I did when I got my current job was to go through the Datawarehousing guide in the Oracle documentation.

Analytics, check.
Materialized Views, check.
OLAP, interesting, but not applicable yet.
Dimensions...hmm, dimensions.

I looked at all the objects in the database but couldn't find any of the type DIMENSION.

I searched AskTom, nothing (or at least nothing I could find).

I can't remember finding any articles on the DIMENSION objects either. Can that be right? Does any one our there use them? Mr. Rittman? Mr. Aldridge? Mr. Scott?

From my brief perusal of the documentation, you can set up the DIMENSION like this:

CREATE TABLE test_dim
(
  test_key NUMBER(10,0) PRIMARY KEY,
  source VARCHAR2(10) NOT NULL,
  source_subcategory VARCHAR2(10)
);

INSERT INTO test_dim( test_key, source, source_subcategory )
VALUES ( 1, 'MEDICAID', NULL );
INSERT INTO test_dim( test_key, source, source_subcategory )
VALUES ( 2, 'MEDICARE', NULL );
INSERT INTO test_dim( test_key, source, source_subcategory )
VALUES ( 3, 'SSA', 'MEDICARE' );
INSERT INTO test_dim( test_key, source, source_subcategory )
VALUES ( 4, 'SPAP', 'MEDICARE' );
INSERT INTO test_dim( test_key, source, source_subcategory )
VALUES ( 5, 'MAPD', 'MEDICARE' );

CREATE DIMENSION test_dim
  LEVEL source IS ( test_dim.source )
  LEVEL source_subcategory IS ( test_dim.source_subcategory );

My best guess is that it's sort of like the heirarchical table format (FK referencing PK from the same table).

Does anyone out there have any experience using them?