Dimensional Modelling

Dimensional Modeling (DM) is a data structure technique optimized for data storage in a Data warehouse. Dimensional modeling aims to optimize the database for faster data retrieval. The concept of Dimensional Modeling was developed by Ralph Kimball and consisted of "fact" and "dimension" tables.

Dimension Table

Dimension provides the context surrounding a business process event; they give who, what, and where of a fact. In the Sales business process, for the fact quarterly sales number, dimensions would be

Who – Customer Names
Where – Location
What – Product Name

They are joined to Fact tables via a foreign key.

Dimensions offer descriptive characteristics of the facts with the help of their attributes.

Fact Table

It contains Measurements, metrics, and facts about a business process, the primary table in dimension modeling.

A Fact Table contains

Measurements/facts
Foreign key to the dimension table

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