CODEWITHSUNDEEP
data-warehouse
navin
navin

Reputation: 394

Data warehouse fact measurements that cannot be meaningfully aggregated over time?

Is there an example of a time-varying numerical quantity that might be in a data warehouse that cannot be meaningfully aggregated over time? If so why?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 390

Answers (2)

David Aldridge
David Aldridge

Reputation: 52376

Stock levels cannot, because they represent a value that is already an aggregation at a particular moment in time.

If you have ten items in stock today and ten yesterday, and ten in stock every day this week, you cannot add them up to "70" meaningfully for the whole week, unless you are measuring something like space utilisation efficiency.

Other examples: bank balance, or speed of flywheel, or time since overhaul.

Upvotes: 2

qxn
qxn

Reputation: 17584

Many subatomic processes can be observed using our notion of "time" but probably wouldn't make much sense when aggregated. This is because our notion of "time" doesn't make much sense at the quantum level.

Upvotes: 0

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