Storing Letter grades

[chade25]

At our school, we have letter grades and I want to record them to the fact table. There really is only one attribute (like 'A+') but it etl tool doesnt allow this but I only want to supply it with a surrogate key and write that to the fact table. Thoughts?

[BoxesAndLines]

I would store the grade values as a dimension. The fact table sounds like a factless fact.

[Jeff Smith]

Just curious, but is there a numerical value associated with the Grade which is used to calculate the Grade Point Average?

[hkandpal]

Hi ,
the best approach is to store in dimension and have one more numeric column which will help in identifying if A+ > A, if you need to compare grades.

thanks

[chade25]

Yeah there is quality points which can refer to an A, but I am putting that on the fact table as well. Do you think I should keep that in the dimension? Its fine but the lower bound of the A is kept in the A- record, which is ok, just means more ETL to have a to and from

[Jeff Smith]

You could have the point value in both the fact and Dimension - doesn't hurt. I would add columns that contained things like "Pass/Fail/Other" (the other would be an incomplete). It's a small dimension so adding things to make it easier to query won't cost anything.

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