What is Fact Data?

Fact Data pertains to the data values described by a company’s business activities, in accordance with logical Dimensions that constitute an OLAP Cube. Fact Data–whether numeric or string values–exist at the Member intersection points.  For example, the number “15” might exist at the intersection of January, Actual, Quantity, Widget6, 2013, New York. In business terms, the number 15 would be understand as the actual sales of widget6 in January 2013 that occurred in New York of .

A Fact Data point in a multidimensional cube might be the aggregation of transactions integrated from an RDBMS, or the result of a Hierarchy or Cube Formula calculation, or even a number entered by another means–e.g., a forecast number entered by a salesperson into a planning model.