The first thing you might ask is: Why are these database models called ‘‘star
schema’’? Probably because the entity-relationship diagram of this kind of
schema resembles a star. The center of the star consists of a large fact table and
the points of the star are the dimension tables. Most users first encounter a star
schema in a sales data mart with customers, products, stores, promotions, and
time.
It’s the modeling technique that counts, not the number of dimension tables
used. One of the obvious benefits of using a schema like this is its simplicity
and understandability for end users. Very often during the design phase of
a data warehouse, star schemas are used to draw the initial translation of
business questions into logical database diagrams.
