Fact and Dimension table what does it mean? How do we
classify which is fact and dimension table? Where do we use these. These are
some of the most common questions that pop up when we hear dimension and fact
table.
Going by book, Fact and Dimension table in technical
perspective is defined as follows
The fact table
contains business
facts (or measures), and foreign keys which refer to candidate
keys (normally primary keys) in the dimension tables.
A dimension table is a
table in a star schema of a data warehouse. A dimension table stores
attributes, or dimensions, that describe the objects in a fact table.
Not let’s dig into this we have basically two schemas Star
and Snow Flake schema
In Star schema a fact
table is surrounded by dimension tables. In Snow flake schema we have again
Fact table in the center of schema
surrounded by dimension tables, however in here the dimension tables can
have their own child tables.
facts correspond to events, dimensions correspond to people,
items, or other objects. For example, in the retail scenario, Purchases,
returns and calls are facts. On the other hand, customers, employees, items and
stores are dimensions .
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