Chapter 12 Quick Reference

Open table as spreadsheet

This term	Means this
Data warehouse	A relational database designed to store management information.
Dimension table	A list of labels that can be used to cross-tabulate values from other dimensions.
Fact table	The relational database table that contains values for one or more measures at the lowest level of detail for one or more dimensions.
Surrogate key	A column in a database dimension table that contains values that uniquely identify each row. Often referred to as the primary key for a dimension.
Foreign key	A column in a database table that contains many values for each value in the primary key column of another database table.
Join	The process of linking the primary key of one table to the foreign key of another table.
Star schema	A database model composed of a fact table and one or more dimension tables. Typically used to model data warehouses and data marts.