Int data type vs Text Data type in Fact tables (performance)

[campelliann]

Hi,

So I have 30.000 rows of timesheet data with my colleagues work input. The csv file, which is the source, comes with their name in the column "person".

Would it make a difference if for instance, I removed their names in power query and then place their employer ID (0-300) in the fact table to achieve more performance. I would then create a lookup table with their names.

It is my understanding that vertipaq converts text to int to compress data size, I dont know if this would apply over here.

Many thanks.

[vanessafvg · Accepted solution]

it wont make a difference because power bi will automatically create a numeric id for your name as you point out.   The only time you potentially really need to creating numbers for id is if you have billions of rows, otherwise the vertipaq engine will automically encode your names and assign numbers to them to do the processing and compression.