Current vs history view of datamarts

Hello,

I am pretty new to data warehousing. I have been going through the Kimball forums and noticed a few posts about current view vs. history view and curious as to what's the difference between these two. I feel like I kind of get this, but getting a mixed up when I start going into details. Could someone help explain me the difference between these two concepts with an example since it helps me kind of understand clearly?

Thanks in advance.

Assuming that you are using slowly changing dimensions (and without going into the complexities of the different SCD types) then you create a new dimension record every time the corresponding source record changes - you then associate to your fact records the dimension records that hold the state of your source data when the fact occurred. This allows you to query the position when a fact occurred (the history view) and the current position e.g.

Show me the total sales last year for customers that were in debt at the time of the sale (history view)
Show me the total sales last year for customers that are currently in debt (current view)

Thank you.