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What is a star schema and why does it matter for dashboards?
A star schema organises data into one central fact table of events, such as sales lines, surrounded by dimension tables that describe them, such as customers, products and dates. It matters because it makes dashboards faster, simpler to build and more consistent, since every report uses the same definitions and joins.
A fact table holds measurable events with numeric values and keys. Dimension tables hold descriptive attributes you filter and group by.
Benefits for BI:
- Business users can drag fields without writing joins.
- Metrics are defined once, so two dashboards do not give different totals.
- Performance is usually better than querying many raw operational tables.
You do not need a perfect textbook design. Even a simple version, with a clean sales fact and a few dimensions, is a big improvement over reporting straight from raw exports.
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