Glossary of BI Terms
What does it all mean?
The Indicee product, APIs and collateral contain some special names for objects and technical processes. This glossary should help to explain any terms you see, as well as providing a different way to get an overview of the Indicee world.
Glossary – End-User Concepts
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Business Calendar (Calendar) | An Asset that defines a set of potentially nested periods (levels) of time. A Business Calendar adds knowledge about the organization of time for a particular purpose. Data can be aggregated by periods in a Calendar, and various formula funcitons are calendar-aware, allowing indexing of values with time shifts (such as obtaining the tax liable from the previous quarter’s income). |
| Data Collection (Collection) | A set of Data Sets in a user’s Data Library. A given Data Set may belong to zero or more Data Collections. A Data Collection creates an association of data for a particular purpose that is meaningful to the user. For example “AcmeCo Sales”, “AcmeCo Inventory”, “NorthShore Golf Club Membership”. Aside from being a basic organizing principle for Data Sets, sharing data with other users works at the level of Data Collections. |
| Data Contribution (Contribution) | An update (distinct addition or modification) of the facts in a Data Set from a particular Data Source at a particular time. A Data Set stores the history of all Data Contributions that have been made, along with the source and parameters that were used to obtain the data and the time and user that contributed the data. A simple method of updating a Data Set is to upload a new file. In this case, the file itself is the data source. |
| Data Library | A Data Library is a set of Data Sets that are available to the user for use in reporting. A user’s Data Library content will either have been created by the user, or received via sharing from others. A Data Library contains zero or more Data Sets, and zero or more Data Collections that help to organize the Data Sets within the Data Library. |
| Data Set | The principle object in a Data Library, the Data Set is a batch of data that has some specific type and purpose. A Data Set’s data is derived from the set of all Data Contributions made to it. Data Sets may themselves be declared as members of one or more Data Collections (but they are not contained by, or owned by any Data Collection). Data Sets contain one or more tables of data. For instance, if a spreadsheet has multiple worksheets when uploaded to Indicee, the target Data Set will contain multiple tables and the user will be able to choose which tables should be used by Indicee and how the columns in the tables should be related. |
| Data Set Column (Column) | A single column in a Data Set. A Column has a display name and a primitive data type (e.g. TEXT, NUMBER, DATE). The type of the Column indicates how the value is interpreted at a basic level when imported into Indicee. There are some constraints on the high-level interpretation of values based on this primitive type, for instance a Time Term can only be derived from an underlying DATE Column. Indicee is able to ‘guess’ the types of Columns, but the user can always override a type assignment in the Indicee data modeling tools. |
| Data Source (Source) | Some origin of data. A Data Source must be connected-to and then queried in some kind of appropriate protocol. For example a simple file is addressed by the file system, and the data is read from the file via a format scanner, whereas a database is addressed via a database connection, and data is read via a query in an appropriate query language, or via orchestrated calls on the database API. |
| Field | A Field is the lowest level object in the Indicee data model that adds data meaning and provides for data convergence and organization. A Field describes a single kind of data that might be met in a Column of a Data Set, adding meaning to the simple data type that a Column possesses. Data Set Columns are mapped to Fields in order to indicate that the data in the Column has a particular meaning/role. Mapping several Columns to the same Field establishes that the mapped Columns contain exactly the same kind of data. This means that values from these Columns can be merged together by Indicee if necessary, or compared to find common instances. Fields are important objects that modelers should try to manage well, providing quality names and good descriptions. A test of good Field management is that when new Data Sets are added, it should be obvious from the Field browser whether there is already an appropriate Field in the library for each new Column. New Fields should only be added if no appropriate Field exists, so the set of Fields should grow slowly as completely new data concepts are introduced. |
| Formula | A Formula is the definition of some calculation. Formulae are used in the definition of many types of Assets in the Indicee data model. A Formula can contain references to other items, depending on context. For instance, calculated Columns can only reference other Columns in the same table . Calculated Fields can refer to other Fields in the Data Library. |
| BI Asset (Asset, Information Asset) | A high-level, distinct, sharable, object that represents some real-world intellectual capital pertaining to business and Business Intelligence. Data, Reports and Dashboards are BI Assets, and Indicee’s platform is capable of representing and manipulating many other kinds of business knowledge that can be captured, shared and easily assembled into new Assets. |
| Information Space | The local space in which all of a user’s BI Assets reside. The user may get various views on his Information Space, according to the need to view certain BI Assets in different tools. A user’s Information Space includes the user’s Data Library. |
| Measure Term (Measure) | A single value fact associated with some data . For instance some data might include “sales” values for a number of franchises, by region, by time. The dollar value of sales provided for any given franchise, region and time is a Measure. Measures can be aggregated (e.g. SUM, COUNT, AVERAGE) in Indicee. The default aggregation is obtained from the underlying Field providing the data for the Measure. |
| Question | A Question is Indicee’s business-level query. A Question is composed from Question Terms that describe what data should be output, along with optional filtering, grouping and sorting of the results. Questions can be framed using any Question Terms available in the user’s Data Library. Thus, Questions can apply across all the Data Sets that a user currently has in their Data Library. |
| Question Term | A Term is used for framing a Queston. The Indicee data modeling tools allow for the definition of business-level Terms. These are normally available for use in the Question Panel as Question Terms, but they can also be hidden to disable their use in creating reports. |
| Report | An BI Asset that presents some data to the user in a convenient form for a business purpose. Currently a Report represents a single Question with additional formatting and presentation options. |
| Subject Term (Subject) | A Term that expands its distinct values as data dimensions. These represent the ‘subject’ of a query, the unique instances of people/places/things to which Measures can be attached. Subjects must have one or more key Fields in their definition that will be used to determine the unique instances in source data. Examples of Subjects include: Product, Store, City, Country, Address, Salesperson, Customer. |
| Term | A Term is a high-level data object that is used in querying data. Terms provide business meaning whereas Fields provide data meaning. Terms are composed from one or more Fields. The following kinds of Term exist at this time: Measure Terms, Subject Terms and Time Terms. As high-level query objects, Terms are used in Indicee’s Question interface, where they are referred to as Question Terms. Terms are defined originally in a user’s local Data Library and may then be shared with other users by sharing the Assets related to them. |
| Time Term (Time) | A Term representing values that indicate a point in time. All time values in Indicee are considered to be a point in physical time. Time Terms are special values in that they are assumed to map into periods defined by Business Calendars. Thus, time-based facts can be placed into display time hierarchies and rolled-up according to calendar periods at various levels. |
Glossary – Developer Concepts
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Application Key | A unique key that exactly identifies a single iBIOS application, with possible extensions and customizations of the Indicee services designed for the application by the application developer. |
| Qualified Name | A Qualified Name is URI that uniquely identifies an Indicee object. All reusable objects and BI Assets have such a stable reference. The definitions of many objects can refer to other objects, and they do so by referring to those objects by their Qualified Name. |
