Vertical Fact Table

A “vertical fact table*” is a fact table with only 1 measure. There is a dim key column in this fact table which determines what kind of measure that row is. On row 1, that measure could mean “sales”, but on row 2, that measure could mean “discount”. In most cases the measure is financial amount. But in some cases the measure can be quantity.

*I got this name from SSAS forum. Some people call it “Normalised Fact Table”. I believe it is called Vertical because it is very long. If you have 40 measures, after you ‘normalise’ the fact table it will be 40x longer.