Dimension tables are the satellite, or minor, tables in a dimensional model. Dimension tables contain descriptive information about the business such as information about customers or products. These tables enable the business user to quickly drill down from the fact table to additional information in key business areas.
Dimension tables relate directly to the fact table with identifying relationships, so that the primary keys of the dimension tables migrate to the primary key of the fact table as foreign keys.
If a dimension table contains too many rows for efficient querying, you can partition the data horizontally or vertically depending on the needs of your data warehouse. To maintain the drill-down capability, relate each dimension partition to the fact table.
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