A starflake schema is a combination of a star
schema and a snowflake schema. Starflake schemas are snowflake schemas
where only some of the dimension tables have been denormalized.
Starflake schemas aim to leverage the benefits of both star schemas and snowflake schemas. The hierarchies of star schemas are denormalized, while the hierarchies of snowflake schemas are normalized.
Starflake schemas are normalized to remove any redundancies in the dimensions. To normalize the schema, the shared dimensional hierarchies are placed in outriggers.
The following figure depicts a sample starflake schema:
Figure 1. Starflake schema with one fact and two dimensions that share an outrigger