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.
Read more about this topic: Fact Table
Famous quotes containing the words steps, designing, fact and/or table:
“Ah, Sun-flower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done:
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“We’re designing a new spacecraft to be launched and there are no women. Where are they? I wonder. I worry.”
—Andrea Dupree (b. 1939)
“One of the many reasons for the bewildering and tragic character of human existence is the fact that social organization is at once necessary and fatal. Men are forever creating such organizations for their own convenience and forever finding themselves the victims of their home-made monsters.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
When our table with cherries and nuts is spread:
Come live, and be merry, and join with me
To sing the sweet chorus of ‘Ha, ha, he!’”
—William Blake (1757–1827)