Analytics Tables and Application Tables

At 09:40 on day 12, a customer at the Maple Street store of a pharmacy chain buys two packs of allergy tablets and one box of bandages. The checkout system records this sale in two tables, sales and sale lines, and reading it back with its store, region, product, and category touches four more. Each of the six tables holds one kind of thing. The chain's analysts store the same sale as two rows in one table, and those rows point to two small tables that already carry the region and category names.

Both layouts hold the same facts and give the same revenue totals