What this book covers

Chapter 1, Unlocking the Power of Modeling, explores the role that models play in simplifying and guiding our everyday experience. This chapter unpacks the concept of modeling into its constituents: natural language, technical, and visual semantics. This chapter also gives you a glimpse into how modeling differs across various types of databases.

Chapter 2, An Introduction to the Four Modeling Types, looks at the four types of modeling covered in this book: conceptual, logical, physical, and transformational. This chapter gives an overview of where and how each type of modeling is used and what it looks like. This foundation gives you a taste of where the upcoming chapters will lead.

Chapter 3, Mastering Snowflake’s Architecture, provides a history of the evolution of database architectures and highlights the advances that make the data cloud a game changer in scalable computing. Understanding the underlying architecture will inform how Snowflake’s three-tier architecture unlocks unique capabilities in the models we design in later chapters.

Chapter 4, Mastering Snowflake Objects, explores the various Snowflake objects we will use in our modeling exercises throughout the book. This chapter looks at the memory footprints of the different table types, change tracking through streams, and the use of tasks to automate data transformations, among many other topics.

Chapter 5, Speaking Modeling through Snowflake Objects, bridges universal modeling concepts such as entities and relationships with accompanying Snowflake architecture, storage, and handling. This chapter breaks down the fundamentals of Snowflake data storage, detailing micro partitions and clustering so that you can make informed and cost-effective design decisions.

Chapter 6, Seeing Snowflake’s Architecture through Modeling Notation, explores why there are so many competing and overlapping visual notations in modeling and how to use the ones that work. This chapter zeroes in on the most concise and intuitive notations you can use to plan and design database models and make them accessible to business users simultaneously.

Chapter 7, Putting Conceptual Modeling into Practice, starts the journey of creating a conceptual model by engaging with domain experts from the business and understanding the elements of the underlying business. This chapter uses Kimball’s dimensional modeling method to identify the facts and dimensions, establish the bus matrix, and launch the design process. We also explore how to work backward using the same technique to align a physical model to a business model.

Chapter 8, Putting Logical Modeling into Practice, continues the modeling journey by expanding the conceptual model with attributes and business nuance. This chapter explores how to resolve many-to-many relationships, expand weak entities, and tackle inheritance in modeling entities.

Chapter 9, Database Normalization, demonstrates that normal doesn’t necessarily mean better—there are trade-offs. While most database models fall within the first to third normal forms, this chapter takes you all the way to the sixth, with detailed examples to illustrate the differences. This chapter also explores the various data anomalies that normalization aims to mitigate.

Chapter 10, Database Naming and Structure, takes the ambiguity out of database object naming and proposes a clear and consistent standard. This chapter focuses on the conventions that will enable you to scale and adjust your model and avoid breaking downstream processes. By considering how Snowflake handles cases and uniqueness, you can make confident and consistent design decisions for your physical objects.

Chapter 11, Putting Physical Modeling into Practice, translates the logical model from the previous chapter into a fully deployable physical model. In this process, we handle the security and governance concerns accompanying a physical model and its deployment. This chapter also explores physicalizing logical inheritance and demonstrates how to go from DDL to generating a visual diagram.

Chapter 12, Putting Transformational Modeling into Practice, demonstrates how to use the physical model to drive transformational design and improve performance gains through join elimination in Snowflake. The chapter discusses the types of joins and set operators available in Snowflake and provides guidance on monitoring Snowflake queries to identify common issues. Using these techniques, you will practice creating transformational designs from business requirements.

Chapter 13, Modeling Slowly Changing Dimensions, delves into the concept of slowly changing dimensions (SCDs) and provides you with recipes for maintaining SCDs efficiently using Snowflake features. You will learn about the challenges of keeping record counts in dimension tables in check and how mini dimensions can help address this issue. The chapter also discusses creating multifunctional surrogate keys and compares them with hashing techniques.

Chapter 14, Modeling Facts for Rapid Analysis, focuses on fact tables and explains the different types of fact tables and measures. You will discover versatile reporting structures such as the reverse balance and range-based factless facts and learn how to recover deleted records. This chapter also provides related Snowflake recipes for building and maintaining all the operations mentioned.

Chapter 15, Modeling Semi-Structured Data, explores techniques required to use and model semi-structured data in Snowflake. This chapter demonstrates that while Snowflake makes querying semi-structured data easy, there is effort involved in transforming it into a relational format that users can understand. We explore the benefits of converting semi-structured data to a relational schema and review a rule-based method for doing so.

Chapter 16, Modeling Hierarchies, provides you with an understanding of the different types of hierarchies and their uses in data warehouses. The chapter distinguishes between hierarchy types and discusses modeling techniques for maintaining each of them. You will also learn about Snowflake features for traversing a recursive tree structure and techniques for handling changes in hierarchy dimensions.

Chapter 17, Scaling Data Models through Modern Frameworks, discusses the utility of Data Vault methodology in modern data platforms and how it addresses the challenges of managing large, complex, and rapidly changing data environments. This chapter also discusses the efficient loading of the Data Vault with multi-table inserts and creating Star and Snowflake schema models for reporting information marts. Additionally, you will be introduced to Data Mesh and its application in managing data in large, complex organizations. Finally, the chapter reviews modeling best practices mentioned throughout the book.

Chapter 18, Appendix, collects all the fun and practical Snowflake recipes that couldn’t fit into the structure of the main chapters. This chapter showcases useful techniques such as the exceptional time traveler, exposes the (secret) virtual column type, and more!