What is a fact table conceptually?

< 1 min read

A fact table stores measurable business events or transactions.
It contains numeric metrics like sales amount, quantity, cost, or duration.
Each row represents a real activity, for example one order line or one payment.
It connects to dimension tables using foreign keys like customer_id, product_id, date_id.
In a retail project, my Sales_Fact table stored order_id, product_id, qty, and revenue.
We calculated KPIs like total sales, average order value, and monthly growth from it.
Fact tables are usually large and continuously growing.
They don’t store descriptive details; those stay in dimension tables.
They act as the main source for aggregations in dashboards.

Power BI Essentials