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How do I keep a history of changes when source systems overwrite data?
Take regular snapshots of the tables that change, such as stock levels, prices or customer status, and store them with a date in your warehouse. This gives you a history that the source system itself does not keep, and enables trend analysis.
Approaches:
- Daily snapshots: copy the full state of a table each day with a snapshot date.
- Slowly changing dimensions: keep old and new versions of a record with valid-from and valid-to dates.
- Event logs, if the source provides them.
Start snapshots as early as possible, since history cannot be recreated afterwards. Storage is cheap compared with the value of knowing what stock, price or status was at a given time.
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