Rational ProjectConsole stores the data extracted from your sources in target tables in the warehouse database. The target tables are set up based on a star schema design and consist of a single measure (or fact) table and any number of dimension tables for a given collection task. (Your warehouse can contain multiple measure tables.)
Before you can modify the target tables in any way, you must first check out the Rational ProjectConsole schema, because adding, modifying or deleting a target table changes the schema. After you finish making changes to the target tables, you must check in the schema so that your changes can be seen and used by collection tasks.
A measure table contains both measurements and foreign keys or pointers to data stored in dimension tables.
A dimension table can either be time-based or character-based.
A character-based dimension table contains one field, which holds a string value for an attribute such as State, Owner, or Project. The Rational ProjectConsole Dashboard uses character-based dimension tables to create distribution charts, to construct data filters, and for drill-down data analysis. Examples of character-based dimension tables are Priority_Dim, User_Dim, Component_Dim, and Project_Dim.
Character-based dimension tables are simply called dimension tables.
A time dimension table contains time-based fields, which the Rational ProjectConsole Dashboard uses to create trend charts. Examples of time-based tables are collectiondate, SubmitDate, and ReleaseDate.
A key difference between a time dimension table and a character-based dimension table is in how their values are assigned. You cannot know the values for character-based dimensions until you run a collection task. However, a time dimension has known values such as Year Num, Month Num, Week Num, Day Num, and so on. Before you use a new time dimension table for data collection, you must populate it with known values (by specifying a start date and an end date in the Populate Time Dimension window).
When constructing star schemas for a Rational ProjectConsole repository, you must create the dimension tables first so that their fields exist before you create the measure tables that reference them.
For information on creating trend and distribution charts, see the Rational ProjectConsole Dashboard Help.
For more information about working with target tables, see Rational ProjectConsole repository: Design and components.