Sometimes when a fact table has a long list of facts that is sparsely populated in any individual row, it is tempting to create a measure type dimension that collapses the fact table row down to a single generic fact identiļ¬ed by the measure type dimension. We generally do not recommend this approach. Although it removes all the empty fact columns, it multiplies the size of the fact table by the average number of occupied columns in each row, and it makes intra-column computations much more difficult. This technique is acceptable when the number of potential facts is extreme (in the hundreds), but less than a handful would be applicable to any given fact table row.