What is a FACTLESS FACT TABLE?

Where we use Factless Fact We know that fact table is a collection of many facts and measures having multiple keys joined with one or more dimesion tables.Facts contain both numeric and additive fields.But factless fact table are different from all these. A factless fact table is fact table that does not contain fact.They contain only dimesional keys and it captures events that happen only at information level but not included in the calculations level.just an information about an event that happen over a period. A factless fact table captures the many-to-many relationships between dimensions but contains no numeric or te!tual facts. They are often used to record events or coverage information. "ommon e!amples of factless fact tables include# $dentifying product promotion events %to determine promoted products that didn&t sell' Tracking student attendance or registration events Tracking insurance-related accident events $dentifying building facility and e(uipment schedules for a hospital or university Factless fact tables are used for tracking a process or collecting stats. They are called so because the fact table does not have aggregatable numeric values or information.There are two types of factless fact tables: those that describe events and those that describe conditions. Both may play important roles in your dimensional models. Factless fact tables for Events The first type of factless fact table is a table that records an event. )any event-tracking tables in dimensional data warehouses turn out to be factless.*ometimes there seem to be no facts associated with an important business process. +vents or activities occur that you wish to track but you find no measurements. $n situations like this build a standard transaction-grained fact table that contains no facts. For eg.

The above fact is used to capture the leave taken by an employee.Whenever an employee takes leave a record is created with the dimensions.,sing the fact FA"T-.+A/+ we can answer many (uestions like 0umber of leaves taken by an employee The type of leave an employee takes 1etails of the employee who took leave Factless fact tables for Conditions Factless fact tables are also used to model conditions or other important relationships among

dimensions. $n these cases there are no clear transactions or events.$t is used to support negative analysis report. For e!ample a *tore that did not sell a product for a given period. To produce such report you need to have a fact table to capture all the possible combinations. 2ou can then figure out what is missing. For eg fact-promo gives the information about the products which have promotions but still did not sell

This fact answers the below (uestions# To find out products that have promotions. To find out products that have promotion that sell. The list of products that have promotion but did not sell. This kind of factless fact table is used to track conditions coverage or eligibility. $n 3imball terminology it is called a 4coverage table.4 Note# We may have the (uestion that why we cannot include these information in the actual fact table .The problem is that if we do so then the fact si5e will increase enormously . Factless fact table is crucial in many comple! business processes. By applying you can design a dimensional model that has no clear facts to produce more meaningful information for your business processes.Factless fact table itself can be used to generate the useful reports JUN !"#ENS"$N

0ow consider the scenario in which there may be a number of low cardinality dimension values that do not fit into an e!isting dimension table. While adding each of these values to the fact table is not incorrect another option e!ists. *uppose that the source system that feeds the transaction star that we6ve typically used contains the following conte!tual elements %dimensions' for each transaction... 7.' Was this item paid using cash debit or credit8 9.' Was this sale originated via a phone call an online order or a walk-in8 :.' Was this a promotional item %2;0'8 Because these are all low cardinality values consider this approach. +ach of the possible combinations are placed into a dimension table assigned a surrogate key and then joined to the fact table for analysis. This is referred to as a junk dimension.

Confor%ed !i%ension

A conformed dimension is a dimension that has the same values for all areas of the business and the dimension that lends itself most readily to this is the date dimension since April usually means the same thing to every department in the organi5ation. *o unless there are some departments that operate on a different fiscal calendar to the rest of the organi5ation we can now label the date dimension as conformed. $n the event that a particular division ; department that wants to use the data warehouse who operates by a different set of dates to the rest of the organi5ation there are two choices# 7. "reate a custom dimension for this department to use in which it does not conform to the rest of the organi5ation resulting in a non-conformed dimension 9. Add the additional information into the conformed dimension so that the outlying department is able to make use of a single conformed dimension with some custom fields %columns' that no other department uses. This change needs to be included into the +T. ; data integration layer so that the non-conformed fields of the dimension are populated and maintained properly. "ustomer dimensions are a little more difficult to conform since various divisions ; departments in the organi5ation often disagree in their elementary definitions of a customer. This is where a good business analyst working together with an e!perienced data modeler can bring in the harmony that is re(uired for a data warehouse to present the value to organi5ations in that the dimensions are conformed and can be readily used by the different types of business users and they can get reliable predictable accurate results.

"nfor%atica & and ' 7. Tar(et fro% Transfor%ation) $n $nformatica <= we can create target from Transformation by dragging transformation in Target designer 9. *ushdown o+ti%i,ation# ,ses increased performance by pushing Transformation logic to the database by analy5ing the transformations and $ssuing *>. statements to sources and targets. ?nly processes any Transformation logic that it cannot push to the database. :. New function in e-+ression editor# 0ew function have been introduced in $nformatica <= like reg-e!tract and reg-match @. .e+ositor/ 0uer/ available in both versioned and non versioned Aepositories previously it was available only for versioned repository. B. U!F %,ser defined function' similar to macro in e!cel C. FT*# We can have partitioned FTD targets and $ndirect FTD File source %with file list'. E. *ro+a(atin( *ort !escri+tions) $n $nformatica < we can edit a port description and propagate the description to other transformations in the mapping.

<. Environ%ent S1L Enhance%ents) +nvironment *>. can still be used to +!ecute an *>. statement at start of connection to the database. We can ,se *>. commands that depend upon a transaction being opened during The entire read or write process. For e!ample the following *>. command )odifies how the session handles characters# Alter session set 0.*-1AT+-F?A)ATF611;));22226G4. H. Concurrentl/ write to %ulti+le files in a session with partitioned targets. 7I. Flat File Enhance%ents)

Aeduced conversion of data types 1elimited file performance has improved Flat file now can have integer and double data types 1ata can be appended to e!isting flat files

$nformatica power center < is having the following features which makes it more powerful easy to use and manage when compared to previous versions.

*upports *ervice oriented architecture Access to structured unstructured and semi structured data *upport for grid computing Jigh availability Dushdown optimi5ation 1ynamic partitioning )etadata e!change enhancements Team based 1evelopment Klobal Web-based Admin console 0ew transformations 9: 0ew functions ,ser defined functions "ustom transformation enhancements Flat file enhancements 0ew 1ata Federation option +nterprise KA$1

*rocedure 2s Function

Drocedure can return 5ero or n values whereas function can return one value which is mandatory.

Drocedures can have input;output parameters for it whereas functions can have only input parameters. Drocedure allows select as well as 1). statement in it whereas function allows only select statement in it. Functions can be called from procedure whereas procedures cannot be called from function. +!ception can be handled by try-catch block in a procedure whereas try-catch block cannot be used in a function. We can go for transaction management in procedure whereas we can6t go in function. Drocedures can not be utili5ed in a select statement whereas function can be embedded in a select statement. ,1F can be used in the *>. statements anywhere in the WJ+A+;JA/$0K;*+.+"T section where as *tored procedures cannot be. ,1Fs that return tables can be treated as another rowset. This can be used in L?$0s with other tables. $nline ,1F6s can be though of as views that take parameters and can be used in L?$0s and other Aowset operations.