Data Definition and View Definition Objects: Data Versus Display

The following tables are samples of the information stored in the data definition and the view definition.

Data Definition
Report Filter	Criteria used to select the data to calculate the metrics in the report
Report Objects	List of objects that make up the data definition; the attributes define the level of detail of the report Derived metrics are listed in Report Objects but are not part of the data definition.
Report Limits	Additional limits applied after report metrics are calculated

 

View Definition
Grid	Objects contained in rows, columns, and pages
Formatting	Font, number format, grid format, and column aliases
Thresholds	Conditional formatting
View Filter	Additional filter applied in memory to the report data
Derived Metrics	Calculations based on metrics already in report and generated from the report result set
Derived Elements	Groupings of attribute elements on a report, to provide a new view of report data for analysis and formatting purposes.
Subtotals	Metric values aggregated to selected attribute levels
Sorting	Sort used to display data in grid

Report designers are generally concerned with data definition while report analysts usually focus on view definition. Report designers work on the details of reports to create a controlled context or environment for the report analysts to work in. This ensures that only reasonable queries are submitted to the database. Reasonable means that irrelevant result sets cannot be created, nor can huge amounts of data be retrieved from the warehouse. This allows a group of report designers to be trained about more advanced report functions while report analysts can manipulate reports without needing to understand the report execution details. Through privileges, you can assign different levels of functionality to different users.

For details on the view definition of reports, and other OLAP analysis features, such as allowing analysts to filter the display of data; on-the-fly report result calculations; defining attribute elements on-the-fly; and changing the level of data aggregation and display, see the In-memory Analytics Help.

Another method of limiting the data available to analyze on a report is through the use of Intelligent Cubes, which are a part of OLAP Services. For an introduction to Intelligent Cubes, see Intelligent Cubes below.