Fact table with multiple facts

Posted by Jeff Meatball Yang on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Jeff Meatball Yang
Published on 2010-03-08T20:44:41Z Indexed on 2010/03/08 20:51 UTC
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Filed under:

data-warehouse

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fact-table

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database-schema

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sql-server

I have a dimension (SiteItem) has two important facts:

perUserClicks 
perBrowserClicks

however, within this dimension, I have groups of dimensions based on an attribute column (let's call the groups AboveFoldItems, LeftNavItems, OnTheFlyItems, etc.) each have more facts that are specific to that group:

AboveFoldItems: eyeTime, loadTime
LeftNavItems: mouseOverTime
OnTheFlyItems: doesn't have any extra, but may in the future

Is the following fact table schema ok?

DateKey   
SessionKey
SiteItemKey
perUserClicks 
perBrowserClicks
eyeTime
loadTime
mouseOverTime

It seems a little wasteful since only some columns pertain to some dimension keys (the irrelevant facts are left NULL). But... this seems like it would be a common problem, so there should be a common solution for this, right?

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