During the design of a data warehouse, you will need to identify which of your tables and views will represent facts, and which dimensions. In this section, we will refer to both tables and views as being either:
A fact table – which stores variable numerical values related to aspects of a business (for example, sales, revenue, budget). These are usually the values you want to obtain when you carry out a decision support investigation.
A dimension table – which stores data related to the axis of investigation of a fact (for example, geography, time, product). A dimension table should be connected to a central fact table.
You can specify your tables and views individually as facts or dimensions, or you can use Multidimensional Objects Retrieval Wizard to perform this task automatically, based on the references connecting them:
The new type is indicated in the Dimensional Type field in the object's property sheet, and a type icon is displayed in the upper left corner of its symbol: