Facts
A fact is a data structure that is generated when an event fires. It contains the triggering event, its value, and the related dimension or dimensions and values. The fact is the essential data storage structure for Discover reporting. This internal storage mechanism is not directly accessible to Discover users through the Portal.
Facts and events
Any data that is to be visible together in the same report must be stored in the same report group because data is stored at the fact level in the database. All facts that are associated with an instance of a triggered event contain the same fact value. Each fact that is associated with a single event can contain dimension data for a different report group.
Multiple facts
Multiple facts can be charted together if they share one or more common dimensions. For example,
if two facts share the DimURL
dimension, then they can be displayed in the same
chart.
- Multiple time-based events can always be displayed in the same chart, since they always share time as a dimension-type axis.
- For reports not based on time, the events in them must share a common dimension to be displayed in the same chart.
Fact value types
A fact value is data which is recorded with the triggered event. There are three types of Fact value types:
- Count fact values - These fact values are undefined. The count of each triggered event is accumulated for reporting.
- Numeric fact values - Numeric fact values are stored at the hourly level. For each hour of numeric fact value you can apply different operations: Sum, Average, Min, Max.
- String fact values - Any non-numeric fact value is a string fact value. No predefined operations can be completed on detected values.
Earlier, specific reference values, as identified by events, were identified by
textfound
values. Now, these values correspond to facts, which are
event-driven values in a data dimension.