fact table is one which contains all the facts
(measures).aggregate table is one which is created after
the cube is processed.this aggregate table contains human
unreadable text.
Diff b/w two tables is performance.
Fact tables contains million of records and retriving the
records from fact table takes time.where as aggregate table
contains limited data from all the required tables,and we
retrive the data it takes less time.
The difference that i know is that the aggregate tables
contain only the summaries of the data where as the fact
tables contain summaries and measures. i.e.,the grain of
the data present in fact table is more than the grain of
the data present in aggregate tables.
A fact table typically has two types of columns: those that
contain numeric facts (often called measurements), and
those that are foreign keys to dimension tables. A fact
table contains either detail-level facts or facts that have
been aggregated. Fact tables that contain aggregated facts
are often called summary tables or aggregated fact. A fact
table usually contains facts with the same level of
aggregation. Though most facts are additive, they can also
be semi-additive or non-additive. Additive facts can be
aggregated by simple arithmetical addition. A common
example of this is sales. Non-additive facts cannot be
added at all. An example of this is averages. Semi-additive
facts can be aggregated along some of the dimensions and
not along others. An example of this is inventory levels,
where you cannot tell what a level means simply by looking
at it.
Aggregate tables also known as summary tables, are fact
tables which contain data that has been summarized up to
different level(Month level, year level) of detail
aggregation.
Fact tables generally contains measures and the composite
key, which is generally a combination of foreign keys from
the respective dimension tables.
Aggregate tables are summary tables which contains the
summary information say for eg:total sales revenue (for a
quarter).
So the difference is in the granularity.Fact tables store
date in more detail level, but in aggregate tables the
granularity is high.