In SAS Data Integration Studio, surrogate and retained key values are:

Question

Options

• Agenerated by the Lookup transformation
• Bcopied from source tables into dimension tables
• Cgenerated by the SCD Type 2 Loader transformation
• Dcopied from dimension tables into source tables

• A
  3% (1)
• B
  8% (3)
• C
  86% (32)
• D
  3% (1)

Explanation

In SAS Data Integration Studio, the SCD Type 2 Loader transformation is specifically designed to manage slowly changing dimension (SCD) processing, which includes automatically generating surrogate keys (system-assigned integer keys that uniquely identify dimension records) and retained keys (keys that persist across historical versions of a record) - this is its core purpose and built-in functionality.

Why the distractors are wrong:

• A - The Lookup transformation retrieves existing values from a reference table; it doesn't generate keys.
• B - Surrogate keys are generated, not copied from source tables; source tables typically contain natural/business keys, not surrogates.
• D - Data flows from source → dimension, never the reverse; dimension tables are targets, not sources of keys being pushed back upstream.

Memory tip: Think of "SCD Type 2 Loader" as the factory that manufactures new keys when it needs to track history - it both loads the data and stamps each record with generated keys. If a transformation is loading SCD data, it's also the one creating the identifiers that make history tracking possible.

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