Steps in Designing A Fact Table
- Identify a business process for analysis (like sales).
- Identify measures or facts (sales dollar), by asking questions like 'What number of XX are relevant for the business process?', replacing the XX with various options that make sense within the context of the business.
- Identify dimensions for facts (product dimension, location dimension, time dimension, organization dimension), by asking questions that make sense within the context of the business, like 'Analyse by XX', where XX is replaced with the subject to test.
- List the columns that describe each dimension (region name, branch name, business unit name).
- Determine the lowest level (granularity) of summary in a fact table (e.g. sales dollars).
An alternative approach is the four step design process described in Kimball.
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