Skip to main content
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Power BI is turning 10! Let’s celebrate together with dataviz contests, interactive sessions, and giveaways. Register now.

Reply
ddumas
Frequent Visitor

creating a multi-fact star schema

I am new to Power BI, and am trying to understand managing relationships .  I am well versed in using star schemas.

 

Let say I have 2 fact tables:

 

Fct_Sales

Fct_Service

 

Both of these share common dimensions of:

 

Customer

Product

Time

 

Fct_sales has other non-shared dimensons of

 

SalesPerson

 

Fct_service has other non-shared dimensions of:

 

ServicePriority

 

---------------

 

I want to corrolate sales (sales$) and service (# service requests) accross common dimensions.

 

How is the data modeled in Power BI such that there are no circular relationships?  I do not want to create "alias tables" as a kluge to avoid circular relationships.  This is a very simplistic example.  Many of my projects have several fact tables sharing common dimensions.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
v-jiascu-msft
Microsoft Employee
Microsoft Employee

Hi @ddumas,

 

Maybe your relationships could be like this. No loops here. You can have a try.creating a multi-fact star schema.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best Regards!

Dale

Community Support Team _ Dale
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

View solution in original post

3 REPLIES 3
v-jiascu-msft
Microsoft Employee
Microsoft Employee

Hi @ddumas,

 

Could you please mark the proper answer as solution or share the solution if it's convenient for you? That will be a big help to the others.

 

Best Regards!
Dale

Community Support Team _ Dale
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.
v-jiascu-msft
Microsoft Employee
Microsoft Employee

Hi @ddumas,

 

Maybe your relationships could be like this. No loops here. You can have a try.creating a multi-fact star schema.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best Regards!

Dale

Community Support Team _ Dale
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.
TomMartens
Super User
Super User

Hey,

 

basically it's no problem to have more than one fact table, some shared dimension tables and some dimension tables that are not shared.

 

Indeed it can become a little more difficult if there are more complex relationship you have to handle, like cascading many-to-many.

 

I strongly recommend to invest some money and buy the "Analyzing Data with Power BI and Power Pivot for Excel" by Albertro Ferrari and Marco Russo. This book is just about the data modeling aspects we have to tackle.

 

Hopefully this gets you started

 

Regards

Tom



Did I answer your question? Mark my post as a solution, this will help others!

Proud to be a Super User!
I accept Kudos 😉
Hamburg, Germany

Helpful resources

Announcements
Join our Fabric User Panel

Join our Fabric User Panel

This is your chance to engage directly with the engineering team behind Fabric and Power BI. Share your experiences and shape the future.

June 2025 Power BI Update Carousel

Power BI Monthly Update - June 2025

Check out the June 2025 Power BI update to learn about new features.

June 2025 community update carousel

Fabric Community Update - June 2025

Find out what's new and trending in the Fabric community.