Fact Table Vs. Dimension Table: What are the main differences?

 

A fact table is a table that stores quantitative data (numeric values) about a business activity. It answers the question “how much” and generally it contains numerous rows, having values such quantity or sales.

If we want to know the “who, what, where and when” of the business activity, understanding the context and background of fact table data, we could find it in a dimension table.  A dimension table stores descriptive, qualitative data (text values) and usually it has fewer rows when comparing with the fact table.

While a fact table summarizes, a dimension table is useful to group and filter data. For example, a fact table “Sales” should have the following columns: Order ID, Product ID, Customer ID, Date and Sales Amount. In this data model, we could have two-dimension tables, one “Product” – with columns like Product ID, Product Name, Category and Supplier - and another “Customer”- with columns like Customer ID, Customer Name and Region.