ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Fact table

Okay little buddy, let me tell you about fact tables! Imagine you are building a big puzzle, and you have all these different pieces that need to fit together perfectly. In a data warehouse, we have lots of data that needs to fit together just like puzzle pieces.

A fact table is like the center of the puzzle, where all of the other pieces come together. It's a table that contains information about events or transactions that happen in a business. For example, if you went to a store and bought a banana, the fact table would have information about that transaction including the date, the price, the name of the store, and the type of payment you used.

The fact table is really important because it helps us ask questions about all of the different pieces of data in our data warehouse. We can use the fact table to compare different types of transactions, to see which stores are making the most money, or to find out which products are most popular.

Just like the center of the puzzle is the most important part, the fact table is an essential part of a data warehouse. It helps us make sense of all of the different pieces of data and put them together in a way that makes sense.