Create a Data Aggregate

Use this effect to build aggregations from a base data source. A base data source consists of the measurements or metrics of a business process, for example, sales volume by day and product. The measures act as independent variables by which dimensional attributes are analyzed.

Aggregations are built from the base data source by changing the granularity on specific dimensions and aggregating up measures along these dimensions. The result of the aggregation is stored in one of your data sources.

For information on committing changes, adjusting transaction timeouts, running with elevated privileges, and supressing user notifications, see Scope.

  1. In the Name box, optionally enter a name. The name is displayed in the action tree, if a name is not entered, a summary of the effect is displayed.
  2. In the Description box, optionally enter a description.
  3. Click the General tab.
  4. In the Base Data list, select the data source containing the base data for the aggregate. The base data source is not a part of your data sources, and you can choose among all Object Classes defined in your Directory.
  5. Click Filter Data to restrict the amount of data aggregated. Follow the instructions in the step-by-step procedure on how to specify a data filter for a data source.
  6. In the Data Aggregate list, select which data source to populate with the aggregated data. If you select a data source of type Object, the aggregations can be saved to permanent storage. For information on committing changes, adjusting transaction timeouts, running with elevated privileges, and supressing user notifications, see Scope.
  7. Click the Dimensions tab. For each dimension defined in the data aggregate, you must select which field from the base data source to use for aggregating up measures along this dimension.
  8. In the table, click the dimension for which you want to select a field, and then click Modify. In the Select Field or Group dialog box, select a field of the same data type as the dimension in the data aggregate. Note that you can select fields located in other data sources that is referred in the base data source. For example, your base data source contains sales volume by day and product. The data aggregate is defined as sales volume by day and product category, where product category is an attribute defined on product. To aggregate data along the product category dimension, expand the product field and select the product category field for the product. Calendar dimensions, such as year, quarter, month and day, can be aggregated from fields with data type Calendar Time. You can also aggregate values along fields with data type String or Integer, such as a product number.
  9. Click the Measures tab. For each measure defined in the data aggregate, you must specify which field from the base data source to use for calculating the measure.
  10. In the table, click the measure you want to calculate, and then click Modify.
  11. In the Value list, click Select a field or group. In the Select Field or Group dialog box, select a field from the base data source or a data source referred in the base data source.
  12. In the Aggregation Function list, select the statistical function to use when aggregating data for the selected field.