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Metrics

Last updated Feb 2, 2025

Metrics, KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and Calculated Measures are pivotal terms forming the foundation of how business performance is measured and defined. Understanding and defining an organization’s KPIs is essential, requiring a shared comprehension across the team. Metrics, central to Metrics Layers and Semantic Layers, are commonly displayed in business reports and dashboards, offering organization-wide accessibility.

Definition of a Metric/Measure

A metric or measure is a context-sensitive expression that can be evaluated across various dimensions to produce a meaningful value, typically representing a key business indicator or performance measure, without requiring explicit SQL joins or aggregations for each calculation.

A Metric, synonymous with KPI or a calculated measure, acts as a cornerstone in gauging and outlining business performance. They typically emerge in business reports and dashboards, providing a clear view of organizational performance to all members.

Consider operational metrics that reflect your company’s performance and service levels, or financial metrics that illustrate its fiscal health. These metrics are often defined through elaborate SQL statements within BI Tools.

Calculated measures, integral to metrics, relate specifically to Dimensions, traditionally mapped in a Bus Matrix. Dimensions represent categorical aspects used for segmentation, filtering, grouping, slicing, and dicing. Examples include sales amount, region, city, product, color, and distribution channel. These concepts are further explored in Dimensional Modeling.

# Additional Measures and Templates

Explore more with:

For further reading, see Semantic Layer or Metrics Layer.

Reference

Metric Trees seem to be another term for metrics, stressing the relations and hierarchy more. Similar to MDX.

# Metrics Stacks

At DuckCon 6 - AMS, Rill announced their metrics stack overview:

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The philosophy is related to Extending SQL for analytics:


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Created 2022-09-19