Must fact tables be designed for aggregation?
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I have been reading up on Microsoft SQL Server's columnstore indexes recently and I have become concerned that my experience does not match that of the industry. Columnstore indexes are designed to make aggregates easy. It is very frequently said that _for this reason_ they are an ideal fit for fact tables.
This make me uneasy. **In my experience, fact tables are not aggregated**. The column list for every fact table I have ever made has been of the form "primary key followed by several dimension columns, followed by every bit of info we store about the primary key". They then get dumped into some BI tool like PowerBI or ThoughtSpot, so non-technical people can filter based on the dimensions and find out whatever they want to know. They might aggregate from time to time, but this certainly isn't the main use of the table. I expect such tables to have well over 100 columns.
Is the table design and access pattern I am describing what is expected of a fact table? Or am I describing an entirely different type of table, the name of which I am ignorant?
Asked by J. Mini
(1237 rep)
Dec 1, 2024, 01:30 AM
Last activity: Dec 1, 2024, 03:26 AM
Last activity: Dec 1, 2024, 03:26 AM