Somente concordo ... inclusive a literatura sobre Data Warehouse e Business Inteligence ao apresentar o modelo dimensional, que pode ser implementado no esquema de estrela (tabelas de dimensões e de fatos em BDs relacionais), o caracteriza como um modelo que não busca a normalização por questões de desempenho:
"Dimensional Modeling Introduction
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Although dimensional models are often instantiated in relational database management systems, they are quite different from third normal form (3NF) models which seek to remove data redundancies. Normalized 3NF structures divide data into many discrete entities, each of which becomes a relational table. A database of sales orders might start with a record for each order line but turn into a complex spider web diagram as a 3NF model, perhaps consisting of hundreds of normalized tables.
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Likewise, most relational database management systems can’t efficiently query a normalized model; the complexity of users’ unpredictable queries overwhelms the database optimizers, resulting in disastrous query performance. The use of normalized modeling in the DW/BI presentation area defeats the intuitive and high-performance retrieval of data. Fortunately, dimensional modeling addresses the problem of overly complex schemas in the presentation area."
fonte: The Data Warehouse Toolkit, Kimball & Ross, 3ª edição, capítulo 1, pags 7 e 8.