Adjoined Dimension Column Clustering to Improve Data Warehouse Query Performance

Columns of dimension tables that are frequently restricted in queries on a star schema database are materialized into the fact table by various means, depending on database product features. This makes it possible to create a multidimensional partitioning on the fact table, so that many queries restricting columns in hierarchies of the columns materialized will retrieve only a small number of cells of a rectangular subset of the partitioning. We believe this approach to be a previously undiscovered, though seemingly obvious, method to accelerate query performance.