Refresh Strategies & Materialized Views

A summary table is only useful if it stays current. The refresh strategy determines how often the summary is updated, how long it takes, and what happens when it fails. This is the operationally consequential part of pre-aggregation. Full Refresh vs Incremental The production pattern: incremental refresh daily, full refresh weekly as a reconciliation check. If the full refresh produces different numbers than the incremental, you have a bug in the incremental logic. The weekly full refresh catches it. Materialized Views A materialized view is a database-managed summary table. You define the query, and the database handles storage and refresh. This is the simplest form of pre-aggregation because you do not need to build or schedule ETL jobs. The database does it for you. Platform Comparison