Hi

How does one decide if data should go into a fact or dimension table?

I have 1 primary key and lots of textual information (5 fields) which
suggests dimension.

However, the data is extremely unlikely to change, which suggets fact??


Ant

This is very high level way to determine but, if you want to see measures BY
something, it's generally a dimension. The measures you want to see BY
something are the things you would place in your fact.

Take a peak at Adventure Works sample analysis services project. You'll see
things like Store, Customer, Sales Region; all of which are Dimensions. You
may want to see total sales for the year for a particular store or how many
customers purchsed in a particular sales region. You could then have facts
such as StoreSales that would store measures such as GrossSales.

There are other situations where your dimensions may serve as both a
dimension and a fact. I would suggest doing a nice Google search for "Ralph
Kimball" and reading some of his articles on warehouse design. They answer
these questions and then some and do a much better job of it.

-Tim

"-ants-" <ants (AT) inurpants (DOT) com> wrote

Ant,

It sounds to me like this data would represent a dimension.