Patent ID: 8793268

Claim:
A data warehouse comprising: a data repository that includes hardware; a master table, wherein the master table including surrogate identifiers initially generated based on data identifiers whenever the master table is populated with data, wherein each surrogate identifier (SID) identifying a master table domain inside the master table, wherein each master table domain accommodates all attributes that are stored together in the master table and is uniquely identified by a corresponding SID; a dimension table, each entry in the dimension table storing a dimension identifier and a corresponding one or more of the surrogate identifiers to link to the master table domains within the master table; a fact table, each entry in the fact table referencing a dimension identifier into an entry in the dimension table, wherein the fact table does not include surrogate identifiers and wherein the fact table is not the master table; and, a SID generator, wherein the SID generator, in response to a user query for requested data from the data warehouse, using a data identifier supplied in the user query to generate a particular SID indicating a location of a particular master table domain in the master table, including receiving a technical request with the data identifier and substituting the data identifier with the particular SID based on the data identifier to the particular SID conversion, and wherein the SID generator generating the particular SID without accessing the master table and without accessing the fact table; wherein the particular SID is used to obtain the requested data from the data warehouse, and the requested data is provided to an originator of the user query without accessing the surrogate identifiers from the master table.