Data sources
are a collection of data items and filters that hide the technical
complexity of databases while providing a business-relevant view of
your company's data. They are created by a data source administrator
so that you can easily define a report.
Each data
source includes one or more data items. For example, a data source
named
Order Information might
include standard data items such as
Order ID,
Product ID,
Unit Cost,
Order Date, and
Order Amount. You decide
which data items to use. You can select all of the data items in the
data source or a subset of data items.
You can also create two types of custom data items:
-
You can calculate a new measure
that is based on one or more existing measures.
-
If the data source includes a time
hierarchy from a multidimensional data source, then you can create
one or more custom data items that are based on relative time.
In addition
to explaining how to use both standard and custom data items, this
chapter explains how to modify the query in these ways:
-
by changing the format used for
one or more data items
-
by specifying to use detail data
instead of grouped and aggregated data
-
by changing the aggregation method
used for one or more measures