Type of Fact Table in Data ware house

Introduction

As we all know that the Fact table contains Facts or numerical data where we can put the Aggregate function.

Here in this article we are trying to classify the Facts within the fact table.

Type of Facts

There are three types of facts present in the facts table. They are..

1.    Additive Facts

The definition says, it can be summed up through all dimension in the fact table. For an example:

Order Date

Product

Warehouse

Sales Amount

If we look the example carefully we find that we can SUM the Sales amount according to Order Date, Product and Warehouse. So the Sales amount can be summed up with each level of Dimension.

2.    Semi-Additive Facts

The definition says, it can be summed up for some of the dimension in fact table. Not for all dimension. For an example:

Date

Account

Current Balance

Profit Margin

In this example, we can find the SUM of the Current Balance for each Account. But it will not make any sense if we Sum of the current Balance by Date wise.

3.    Non-Additive Facts

The definition says, it cannot be summed up for any dimension in fact table. Form an example:

Date

Account

Current Balance

Profit Margin

It is not meaningful if we summed up the Profit Margin either by Account or by Date.

Hope you like it.

Posted by: JOYDEEP DAS