Derived elements

An attribute is a business concept that reflects your stored data, such as Year or City. The elements of a business attribute are the unique values for that attribute. For example, 2006 and 2007 are elements of the Year attribute, while New York and London are elements of the City attribute. On a report, attributes are chosen to build the report, but once the report is executed, the attribute's elements are displayed in the rows or columns.

A derived element is a grouping of attribute elements on a report. These groups provide a new view of report data for analysis and formatting purposes. For example, you can group data for the months of December, January, and February into a single element that combines and displays the data for the entire winter season.

Rather than having to define consolidations or custom groups, you can use derived elements to create these groups on-the-fly while viewing a report. Derived elements are evaluated in the report without regenerating or re-executing SQL.

Derived elements are defined by using a list, filter, or calculation to combine attribute element data.

For details on creating derived elements and using them to analyze data, see the In-memory Analytics Help.