Dimension View Vs Cube View

First thing first – here with “Views”, I mean both Calculation Views (sometimes referred to as HANA Views) and CDS Views.

In order to understand the difference, we need to begin with “Measures” and “Attributes“. While their literal meanings are sufficient to explain the difference, just to be sure – Attributes are properties (against which measurement is made) and Measure is something that defines the measurement.

For example – numbers of red cars sold in Europe. Here, the car is an entity, then “red” and “in Europe” are the attributes and “number of cars sold” is the measure.

Another example – I bought 20 litres of skimmed milk and 5 small packs of heavy cream. Here, the Product is an entity, “heavy cream” and “skimmed milk” are attributes and “20 litres” and “5 packs” are the measures.

With this, we come to a new term – entity. So, the entity is for which we are doing the whole thing. You have to look at the big picture to spot the entity. In the second example – milk and creams can be considered as attributes of the product – because in the big picture we want to look into both milk and cream.

If we create a collection of attributes for an entity, then we get a Dimension View. If you consider it, you will find it analogous to “master data”. A Dimension View should not have any measure field.

If we create a view with the entity key fields, and the measures – then we get a Cube View – looks similar to “transactional data”. A cube view has to have one identifier which can be used to find the “attributes”. Actually, this identifier is needed in both Views, but it is easy to miss out on the cube view. For example, we are fetching data from the Sales Order table – and we miss out on material number or plant.

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