Carter Shanklin shows how to manage Type 1, 2, and 3 slowly changing dimensions in Hive:
The most common SCD update strategies are:
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Type 1: Overwrite old data with new data. The advantage of this approach is that it is extremely simple, and is used any time you want an easy to synchronize reporting systems with operational systems. The disadvantage is you lose history any time you do an update.
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Type 2: Add new rows with version history. The advantage of this approach is that it allows you to track full history. The disadvantage is that your dimension tables grow without limit and may become very large. When you use Type 2 SCD you will also usually need to create additional reporting views to simplify the process of seeing only the latest dimension values.
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Type 3: Add new rows and manage limited version history. The advantage of Type 3 is that you get some version history, but the dimension tables remain at the same size as the source system. You also won’t need to create additional reporting views. The disadvantage is you get limited version history, usually only covering the most recent 2 or 3 changes.
The Hive solution is getting closer and closer to a traditional relational warehouse solution. And on the whole, that’s a good thing.