Snowflake unlikely that any two snowflakes are alike due to the estimated 10 (10 quintillion) water molecules which make up a typical snowflake, which grow at different rates and in different patterns depending on the changing temperature and humidity within the atmosphere that the snowflake falls through on its way to the ground. Snowflakes that look identical, but may vary at the molecular level, have been grown under controlled conditions. Although snowflakes are never completely symmetrical, a non-aggregated snowflake often grows so as to exhibit an approximation of six-fold radial symmetry. The symmetry gets started due to the hexagonal crystalline structure
Snowflake schema is similar to the star schema. However, in the snowflake schema, dimensions are normalized into multiple related tables, whereas the star schema's dimensions are denormalized with each dimension represented by a single table. A complex snowflake shape emerges when the dimensions of a snowflake schema are elaborate, having multiple levels of relationships, and the child tables have multiple parent tables ("forks in the road"). Star and snowflake schemas are most commonly found in dimensional data warehouses and data marts where speed of data retrieval is more important than the efficiency of data manipulations. As such, the tables in these schemas