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What is a dimension table

Answer posted by Riaz Ahmad on 2005-06-09 14:45:26: A dimensional table is a collection of hierarchies and categories along which the user can drill down and drill up. it contains only the textual attributes.

Total Answers and Comments: 8

Last Update: March 04, 2009

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Submitted by: Edmond

Let's be very clear. this is a very simple, and becomes a very confusing subject.
A fact table is an entity representing the numerical measurements of the business. A dimension table is the entity describing the textual representation of the business.

In a banking model, the account and balances are the measurements within the fact table, where customer name, social security, address, time period of the account, are the dimensions (customer/time).

Hope this answers the clarification.

Above answer was rated as good by the following members:
nflow2, ankeshjain, swathirao_829, vishal_9009, cfo_2016

June 05, 2005 11:39:13

deepak

RE: What is a dimension table

A dimesion table in datawarehouse is one which contains primary key and attributes.we called primary key as DIMID's(dimension id's).

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June 09, 2005 14:45:26

Riaz Ahmad

RE: What is a dimension table

A dimensional table is a collection of hierarchies and categories along which the user can drill down and drill up. it contains only the textual attributes.

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1 0

Overall Rating: +1

October 04, 2005 02:08:01

senkumar79

Member Since: October 2005 Contribution: 17

RE: What is a dimension table

Dimension tables r nothing but a master tables thru which u can extract the actual transactions .Dimension table contains less columns and more rows.

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February 13, 2006 03:49:30

SENTHIL KUMAR B

RE: What is a dimension table

Dimensional table is a table which contains business dimensions thru which v analyse the business metrices

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August 08, 2006 02:55:21

sunil

RE: What is a dimension table

dimension table contains normalized data

what about fact table

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April 12, 2007 20:27:11

Edmond

RE: What is a dimension table

Let's be very clear. this is a very simple and becomes a very confusing subject.
A fact table is an entity representing the numerical measurements of the business. A dimension table is the entity describing the textual representation of the business.

In a banking model the account and balances are the measurements within the fact table where customer name social security address time period of the account are the dimensions (customer/time).

Hope this answers the clarification.

Is this answer useful? Yes | No

4 0

Overall Rating: +4

July 01, 2007 11:52:42

jyotsna

RE: What is a dimension table

A dimensional table contains detail values/data which is short and wide(ie; less coloums and more rows)
Always based on dimensions analysis is done in Datawarehousing.

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March 04, 2009 08:02:14

mickey_gupta

Member Since: March 2009 Contribution: 1

RE: What is a dimension table

Dimension table contains reference data which gives meaning to fact data. You can also view them as parameters across which you want to analyze the fact data.

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