Alias Table

What is an Alias table and why is it used?

An alias table (Alias) is a physical table which references a different physical table as its source

Advantages of using alias table:

• It allows you to reuse any existing table more than once, without having to import it several times

• It can be used to avoid circular joins by setting multiple tables each with different keys, names or joins For example: Order date and Shipping date may reference to same column in the time dimension table. By using alias you can create two different tables OrderDate and ShippingDate

• It can be used for best practice naming conventions as you can rename the table and leaving the original physical table as it is