Snowflake Schema versus Reference Relationship

  Sometimes, you may have a choice between using a snowflake schema to define attributes in a dimension from multiple tables, or defining two separate dimensions and defining a reference dimension relationship between them.


To define a Reseller dimension that contains geography information about each reseller, you would have to retrieve these attributes from the DimGeography and the DimReseller dimension tables. However, in Analysis Services, you can achieve the same result by creating two separate dimensions and linking them in a measure group by defining a reference dimension relationship between the two dimensions.