Chapter 2. Setting Up an Analytics Semantic Layer and Public Objects
Semantics in general means the meaning of a message behind the words, so when we say semantic in terms of BI, it means the meaning of data from the user's perspective. It is the keystone of any data warehouse project, as it allows better understanding of requirements, the design of successive data models, and a link between the physical data model and the reporting tool, in our case MicroStrategy. In the previous chapter, we learned about setting up an environment for MicroStrategy, so in this chapter we can dig deeper and understand about the semantic layer and the objects needed to present data to an end user.
This chapter will cover:
BI architecture
The project design process
Defining schema objects
Creating attributes
Defining parent-child relationships
Building hierarchies
Creating facts
Defining public objects
Creating simple and complex metrics
Adding filters
Creating prompts