title: Data Warehousing - Star Schema vs Flat Table
body: <p>I'm trying to design a Data Warehouse for a single store of commonly required data ranging from finance systems, project scheduling systems and a myriad of scientific systems. I.e. many different data marts.</p>
  
  <p>I have been reading up on Data Warehousing and popular methods such as Star Schemas and Kimball methods etc but one question I cannot find answer to is:</p>
  
  <p><strong>Why is it better to design your DW Data Mart as a star schema rather than a single flat table?</strong></p>
  
  <p>Surely having no joins between facts and attributes/dimensions is faster and simpler than having lots of small joins to all the dimension tables? Disk space is not a problem, we'll just throw more disks at the database if necessary. Is the star schema slightly outdated these days or is it still data architect dogma?</p>