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Hybrid Hub-and-Spoke and Kimball Architecture ​

As the name suggests, this architecture attempts to combine the best aspects of both the Inmon (Hub-and-Spoke) and Kimball methodologies. It can be appropriate in large, complex enterprise environments where a centralized, integrated atomic data store is required in addition to a dimensional presentation layer.

  • Structure: Data is extracted from source systems and loaded into a centralized, normalized (3NF) Enterprise Data Warehouse (Inmon style). This serves as the atomic, integrated foundation.
  • Presentation: From this centralized EDW, data is transformed into a dimensional presentation layer (Kimball style star schemas) utilizing conformed dimensions.
  • Pros: Offers the rigorous, atomic data integration of a normalized EDW while still providing the highly optimized, user-friendly dimensional querying layer advocated by Kimball.
  • Cons: Extremely complex and expensive to build and maintain, as it effectively requires building the warehouse twice (once in 3NF, then again dimensionally).

Hybrid Hub-and-Spoke and Kimball Architecture

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Modern cloud data warehouses (like Snowflake or BigQuery) can host multiple logical layers - including staging, integration and dimensional presentation - within the same physical platform. The logical separation between these layers can still remain important even when they share the same underlying technology.