Forum Discussion
How do I combine items with different names?
- 10 years ago
If you don't care about the name at time-of-sale, but only want to plot current name, then there's no need to deal with a type 2 SCD. Type 1 would be sufficient (how you track in the source is irrelevant to how you handle in the analysis and presentation layers).
If you can utilize [CustomerID] for all of the relationships in your model that have to do with customers, you can just store a single value for [CustomerName] in your customer dimension.
You can utilize SQL or Power Query to find the most recent name for a given [CustomerID]. If it's not important to preserve a specific, most recent name, you could even take a shortcut by using the 'Remove Duplicates' transformation in Power Query - this would non-deterministically remove all but one [CustomerName] associated with each [CustomerID]. It may even be deterministic with an appropriate sort order (unsure how the transformation is implemented in PQ).
- Anonymous10 years ago
CraigBlackman Since you have the account_id, I'd just create a mapping table which will be your dimension. Each account_id and the company name like greggyb suggests.
You could easily create a process after the initial table creation to check / add new companies going forward. (based on the assumption that the initial company name would stay going forward.)
Use the Querry Editor to replace the name in the data after it is uploaded. Use the customer account number to pull the numbers. Create a calculated column building on an if statement so that all other customer names are pulled in without change. That customer's name is changed. Then, use that column for building reports displaying name.