Anchor Modeling Cheat Sheet (.pdf, 189.26 KB)
Click here to download a cheat sheet describing the most important facts about anchor modeling.

Three Concepts of Time in Anchor Models (.pdf, 20.51 KB)
In anchor models there are three different concepts of time; changing time, happening time and recording time. The names reflect what they represent: 'when a value is changed', 'when an event happened', and 'when information was recorded'. This brief article describes their differences from a modeling and implementation perspective.

Analysis of normals forms for Anchor Models (.pdf, 99.82 KB)
Definitions of normals forms for the different table types found in anchor models.

Stockholm University and KTH Course Presentation (.pdf, 1.18 MB)
This is the presenatation that was held as a guest lecture for the data warehousing and relational database modeling classes at DSV (SU/KTH).

Example Anchor Model Database (.zip, 188.98 KB)
This archive contains a script for SQL Server 2005 that sets up an example anchor model database. It also contains two PDF files, one poster showing the model and an overview of some selected objects and data and one showing all the created objects.

Naming Conventions (EBNF) (.ebnf, 991 Bytes)
This file contains an EBNF description of the naming conventions used for the different entities found in anchor modeling.

Anchor Modeling TDWI Presentation (.pdf, 1.77 MB)
This is the presentation that was held at the TDWI European conference in Amsterdam 2007 with some additional notes by the authors.

Anchor Modeling Performance (.zip, 47.07 KB)
We have created some scripts to be used with SQL Server 2005 that set up stored procedures for doing automated performance tests. These compare an Anchor Modeled database with one in the third normal form. Thanks to the table elimination technique AM will beat 3NF for most of the queries commonly used in data warehousing environments.

Performance Test Results (.zip, 364.12 KB)
This file contains test results from one extensive test run on a server with a RAID5 disk configuration, and smaller tests run on four different hardware configurations for comparison. This comparison shows that query times change less in anchor models compared to 3NF when the hardware changes.

Strong vs. Weak Typing (.zip, 30.28 KB)
We have compared an anchor model with a corresponding weakly typed model with respect to data size and performance. Included in the file is a script for SQL Server 2005 and a slide showing the models and results.

Retail Store Example Model (.pdf, 103.03 KB)
This is an example anchor model for a retail store chain which illuminates many modeling concepts. Note that we have changed the symbols for historized objects to having a double outline after this example was made. In this example an old notation was used.