Orientation
What You'll Master Here
So far you have designed individual stars and dimensions. This chapter zooms all the way out to the architecture question: how should the entire data warehouse be organized? Three schools of thought have dominated the field, and knowing them, and when each fits, is what separates a table-designer from an architect.
You will learn Inmon’s top-down normalized corporate warehouse, Kimball’s bottom-up dimensional bus (which the last four chapters were built in), and Data Vault’s insulated, auditable raw layer. Each is a coherent philosophy with real trade-offs, not a fad.
The goal is judgment: given a team, a set of sources, and a compliance context, you should be able to recommend an approach (or, as most modern shops do, a deliberate blend) and defend it. We end with that decision and with how these combine in practice.
Why it matters
The architecture choice shapes how fast you deliver, how well you handle change and audit, and how teams collaborate. Picking dogmatically (or by accident) leads to warehouses that are slow to build or impossible to govern.
Core mental model
Inmon = integrate first (normalized core), then mart. Kimball = mart first (dimensional bus), integrate via conformed dims. Vault = insulate raw (hubs/links/sats), then mart.
- Inmon (CIF)
- A top-down, normalized enterprise data warehouse feeding dependent dimensional marts.
- Kimball
- A bottom-up set of dimensional stars integrated by conformed dimensions (the bus).
- Data Vault
- An auditable, source-resilient raw layer of hubs, links, and satellites, with marts on top.
- data mart
- A subject-area, query-friendly model (usually dimensional) served to business users.
Common mistake
Treating one methodology as universally "the right way".
You force a poor fit, e.g. a heavyweight Inmon build where a quick Kimball star was needed, wasting months.
Better habit
- Choose architecture by context, not by ideology.
- Know what each approach optimizes for and costs.
- Expect to blend approaches rather than pick one purely.
These are not competing products; they are answers to "where does integration happen?" Inmon integrates in a normalized core, Kimball in conformed dimensions, Vault in an insulated raw layer.
For each approach, track three things: how it integrates sources, how fast it delivers value, and how well it handles change and audit. The comparison falls out of those.
Practice prompts
- In one sentence each, say where Inmon, Kimball, and Vault perform integration.
- Name a context where speed-to-first-report matters most.
Remember this
Three architectures (Inmon, Kimball, Data Vault) answer "how is the whole warehouse organized?"; mastery is matching the approach, or a blend, to your context.