Any tool to automatically de-normalize a database?

Question

I have got a normalized transactional database. I am setting up a data warehouse for reporting purposes. Are there any tools which will automatically make de-normalization suggestions? Or something to automate database changes in that manner?

Answer 1

Not that I know of. However, Kimball's design method is relatively straightforward, so it should be able to be suported with some kind of semi-automation if you identify the facts and have foreign key relationships defined in your database.

I built a tool which flattens out Kimball stars based on the FK metadata in the database to build views which can be used in the application, so I image something similar could work on a normalized DB - it just wouldn't be as simple as starting from the fact table and starring out based on the FK relationships.