title: How to design a star schema
body: <p>I am confused where should I start to design a star schema.</p>
  
  <p>for example
  I have tables in database as follows:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Branch(branchNo, bStreetAddress, bCity)
  LoanManager(empNo, empName, phone, branchNo)
  Customer(custNo, custName, profession, streetAddress, city, state)
  Account(accNo, accType, balance, accDate, custNo)
  LoanContract(contractNo, loanType, amount, loanDate, empNo, custNo)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want to design a data-warehouse to analysis the loads
  such as :</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>The total amount of loans in 2008.</li>
  <li>For the type of loans with more than 10 loan contracts, the type of loan and the number of contracts</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>when creating a star schema, what where should I start?</p>
  
  <p>For what I understanding, all the star schemas must have a center, and the center fact table, contains "Measures" and "Relations to other fact tables".</p>
  
  <p>So, is it that, when designing the star schema, we always start from the center,
  confirm what are the measure first? and then choose proper relation to another fact table?</p>
  
  <p>But I still have another question, what should we choose to be Measures?
  When choosing measures, what question should I ask myself?</p>