Question

data warehousing and dimensional modelling

Software Quality Assurance, Data analysis, Customer relationship management applications, Data mining/analysis, Business Objects, Cognos, Informatica, Data warehousing applications, Ecommerce applications, ERP, Hardware, Database Management Systems, Development, Lifecycle development

is there any way to conclude if any particular schema (star,snow flake or any other) is most suitable for an industry type (pharma,manufacturing,retail, etc) irrespective of the paltform on which the data warehouse will be developed.
Is there any book which dicusses this in depth or some online material which can further help.
Thanks all

You are raising the perennial question on what model is best. There is unfortunately no clear cut global answer to that: it will depend on the particular needs of your data environment (hard- and software) and not the least the reporting needs that the users express.
Based on those needs you can start to architect a solution for setting up the data: the most common approach is still a star scheme. For teams that are not quite familiar with the effects of queries in a star or snowflake or relation, a star scheme is the best fit, i.e. has the best chance for satisfactory to good results.
When time and budget permits, one can build two solutions and run a few tests to evidence which solution is the best or where the architecture can be changed to improve the performance.

I have no ready title for an international book or article that may compare in more detail the different solutions. The most popular books come from Ralf Kimball & co-authors but he is in favour of star scheme solutions.

One of the authors I know who has a balanced view on this subject is a Dutchman called Rick van der Lans (R20/Consultancy). He has a website on www.R20.nl with an English mirror. You may want to check if he has on his site more info (In his presentations, he has, but the ones I have are in Dutch)

Success !
Dries GEERAERT