what if a fact table/view is a template(meant to contain only table structure but no data)?

Question

I noticed that the fact tables used in a cube were actually views. Infact they were the templates of the fact tables (i noticed it in the script that "where 1=2" was used for the fact-views).

So, if the template is used, there wont be any data in the view at any cost (and i dont know if I can insert in the view becasue I dont have insert privilege in the view).

So, my question is: Am I missing something in the cube to look at? because the cube is designed by a very experienced dev and I am just a QA. The cube designing pane shows clearly that it s using the template (as it shows in the yellow header of each rectangular shaped object in DSV designer. Can it be referenced to any other table/view as opposed to what is being shown in the header?

Answer 1

Not entirely sure why this is a CW, but regardless, you're not missing anything. The fact table can be a view (and in fact, I do this a lot with testing).

What you are missing is that you cannot insert into a view because it's read-only (henceforth, "view"). You're looking at a SELECT statement from other table(s). Since it's abstracted, there's no way that you can insert data into the view--the view only reflects data in its source tables.

Answer 2

It may be a case for maintaining a many - many relationships developer might have used the fact table to match primary keys of 2 diff dimensions