The databases, tables, dimensions, facts, field formats and conventions

Data that is retrieved from different sources will invariably have different structures. Some of these data resources need more formatting than others in order to turn them into clean, usable tables.

As previously mentioned, a table might be as simple as having a single digit in a text file. As long as users know what that digit represents, they can assign a qualitative or quantitative value to it. Imagine a situation where you are collecting rainfall measurements. Entering the amount of rainfall as subsequent rows of text into a new file constitutes a table.

The amount of rainfall is a measure; it is a quantitative fact. A dimension is a field that contains qualitative data. ...

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