Building a Junk Dimension

When the interviewer points to five boolean flags on your fact table and asks 'where do these go?', they are testing whether you know the consolidation pattern. Saying 'leave them on the fact table' is a weak answer. Saying 'create five separate dimensions' is worse. The strong answer names the junk dimension pattern and designs one in 30 seconds. The Schema You Should Be Able to Write in 60 Seconds 32 rows How You Load It: The Detail Interviewers Probe Pre-population is the strong answer. It makes the fact load a pure lookup with no dimension-side writes, which simplifies concurrency and makes the pipeline idempotent. How You Query It: Show the Interviewer It Works Your query answer: 'The query reads exactly like it would if the flags were on the fact table. JOIN dim_order_flags, filter o