Data Warehouse Customer Transactions Oracle Tips by Burleson Consulting

The Data Warehouse Development Life Cycle

ANALYZING SOURCE DOCUMENT INPUT

CUSTOMER TRANSACTION

The heart of our data warehouse is the measurement of customer transactions. This document is embodied in the sales receipt that a customer receives when they pass through the check-out register. However, we must note that our point-of-sale register will be recording more information than will be displayed on the receipt.

Figure 3.11 A customer transaction.

From Figure 3.11, we can create the following data dictionary description:

customer_transaction =

store_location,
date,
time_of_day,
cashier ID,
(grocery_club_ID),
payment_method = ! 1 = cash !
! 2 = VISA !
! 3 = MC !
! 4 = check !
! 5 = Food stamps !
store_id,
1
{ trans_type = ! GC !, quantity_sold, product_description, total_price },
999 ! WT !
! N/A !
1
total_sale_amount = { total_price },
999

1
grocery_club_discount = { trans_type = ! GC !, quantity_sold,
product_description, total_discount },
999

1
total_discount_amount = {total_discount },
999

sale_price_before_tax = total_sale_amount + total_discount_amount,
sales_tax_amount = sale_price_before_tax * .08
net_amount_collected = sale_price_before_tax - sales_tax_amount

Note that the price for each discount amount may vary by the current date, because grocery club discounts are offered within specific time periods.

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This is an excerpt from "High Performance Data Warehousing", copyright 1997.

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