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 Need Help Updating Foreign Surrogate Keys

Author  Topic 

jerrynovak
Starting Member

1 Post

Posted - 2008-05-21 : 10:23:21
I am in the process of building a fact table in a staging area. The data in the host system has numerous composite keys, so I have replaced all the composite keys in the dimensions with surrogate keys (integer) which are generated using an identity at load time. When I load the staging (fact) table, I have set the default value of all the foreign keys to 0. What I must do now is update all the foreign key values with the surrogate key values from the dimensions. I'm using an update command and the original gid values from the source system in the where clause...i.e.
UPDATE X
SET x.key_1 = y.key_1
FROM TableA X WITH (NOLOCK)
INNER JOIN TableB Y WITH (NOLOCK)
ON x.org_id = y.org_id
AND x.bus_id = y.bus_id
AND x.prov_gid = y.prov_gid
AND x.log_gid = y.loc_gid;

This seems to work fine for most tables. However, I am now trying to update a table that has over 10 million rows and approximately 30 foreign keys. The script runs for hours. I ususally stop it after about 8 hours when it still hasn't completed. Since the keys are dynamic and they could possibly change during each load process, I can't add them during the load process.

Is there a better way to update these keys. I need to regenerate the fact tables every night and taking this much time to reload a fact table is just not practicle. I've indexed the alternate keys on all the dimensions and have also indexed the gids on the target fact table. Am I doing something wrong? Have I over indexed the target table? Please help! Thanks Jerry

dshelton
Yak Posting Veteran

73 Posts

Posted - 2008-05-21 : 23:58:53
Can't you just reference the table that has the surrogate key in the actual load process instead of updating the table after the load process?

David
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