Fact Table vs Dimension Table Comparison Table

 

Fact Table vs Dimension Table Comparison Table

Characteristics	Fact Table	Dimension Table
Basic Definition	It contains measurements, facts or metrics of the attributes.	It is the companion table that contains attributes using which fact table deduce the facts.
Design	It is defined by data grain.	It is descriptive, complete and wordy.
Task	It contains measures and is used for analysis and decision making.	It contains information about a business and its process.
Type of Data	It contains data in both numeric as well as textual format.	It contains data in only textual format.
Key	It has a primary key for each dimension which is acts as a foreign key in the dimension table.	It has a foreign key associated with the primary key of the fact table.
Storage	It stores the filter domain and reports labels in dimension tables.	It stores the detailed atomic data into dimensional structures.
Hierarchy	It does not have a hierarchy.	It contains a hierarchy.
Attributes	It has less attributes	More attributes
Records	More records	Less records.
Table Growth	The table grows vertically.	The table grows horizontally.
Creation Time	A fact table is created after dimension tables are created.	The dimension table needs to be created first.
Schema Structure	There is less number of fact tables in a schema.	There is a number of dimension tables in a schema.