What Is Dimension Table?

Consider the dimension table if you're looking for a way to organize your data. The dimension table is a database table referencing defining pieces of information or attributes for particular records in a primary database table. It's part of a conceptual database map showing its logical construction. Like, any dimension table has the primary key that links all dimension records to a particular primary form. A typical example is when you have a product catalog with products and their associated attributes, like color and weight. The product catalog would be considered one table, while each feature would be its table that references back to the product catalog using an ID number as its primary key. Dimension tables will also often have a timestamps column, tracking when the data was last updated and when the next update is due. You can add metadata columns to your dimension tables, such as a category, location, or product type. These are often optional for the table to be functional, but they do improve the searchability of the data and make it easier for analysts to do specific queries. Dimension tables are often broad and shallow because they receive little traffic as they are rarely queried and don't need to be normalized. It's usually recommended that you keep them unnormalized to make them easier to analyze. Dimension tables are the backbone of most data warehouses. They hold all the "stuff" about your company's products—the dimensions of what you sell. They're used to store measurements about your products, such as weight, size, shipping protocol, bar code, or warehouse location information. Enterprise users then use SQL queries to search for records matching particular attributes. In many cases, dimension tables are de-normalized. De-normalization involves adding redundant data after normalization—a process that can be done to reduce the necessity of joining commands and for other purposes.