So dimensions filter your selection, however, there is no reporting unless you are showing values. Measures are simply the data values that you want to report on. For example, you can report on the product sales, transaction count, or even gross sales.

They can be divided into qualitative and quantitative. For example, if you are reporting on the gender or the function of the employees in the fact table of employee, then you are using qualitative since it is a quality of the object.

If you are reporting on the amount of sales generated by a sales person, then we are talking about a quantitative measure (it is mostly the case when dealing with measures).

Measures are most of the time numeric, are mostly additive, can be aggregated and are stored in fact tables.

Figure 1: Sample picture illustrating dimensions and measures. The measure is simply the gross sales amount