Skip to main content

Measures (or metrics)

Measures (or metrics) are aggregations performed inside of a SQL group by statement. A simple one is sum(sales), which you could specify in your data model with type: sum and sql: ${TABLE}.sales. They can get highly complex and are as flexible as your data warehouse's SQL syntax.

Properties#

name: (Required) The name of the measure (or metric). If you reference this measure (or metric) elsewhere in your data model you will use this value. Like all names, it follows Zenlytic naming conventions

field_type: (Required) The field type of the field. For measures (or metrics) this is always measure.

type: (Required) The type of the field. For measures this is one of sum, average, count, count_distinct, sum_distinct, average_distinct, median (if supported in your database), max, min, cumulative, or number. Note, both sum_distinct and average_distinct require you to pass a value to the sql_distinct_key property. cumulative requires you to pass the measure property.

label: The label of the measure (or metric) is what shows up to the end users of your data model. If not specified it defaults to the name of the measure (or metric).

description: The description of the measure (or metric). This is shown in the UI and can help end users understand what the field represents. When this is set and the zoe_description property is not set, this will be shown to Zoë. Use this to provide context to Zoë on how to use the field correctly.

zoe_description: The description of the measure (or metric) shown to Zoë. If not set, Zoë uses description instead. If set, this replaces description for Zoë only. End users will still see description in the UI. Use this to provide context to Zoë on how to use the field correctly.

group_label: The label of the view the field is put into in the left hand sidebar menu. If not specified it defaults to the name of the view the field is present in.

hidden: A true indicates that this field should be hidden in the user interface. If a field is hidden it can still be referenced in the data model, despite not appearing to end users as a selectable field. The default is false which shows the field in the UI.

sql: (Required) This is the SQL expression that generates the field value. It can be as simple as ${TABLE}.my_field_name which just references a column in the database table, or something more advanced that references previously defined fields, like case when ${channel} ilike '%owned' then 1 else 0 end.

value_format_name: This is the format to use when displaying the field. Check out field formatting to see available options. The default is decimal_1, which formats 12543.5524 to 12,543.6.

synonyms: This is a list of strings phrases or words that you want to act as synonyms for natural language search. For example, if your measure is named total_revenue you might have synonyms of ['total sales', 'income']. This works like a keyword search under the hood, to make fields with synonyms related to the question asked show up in context for Zoë.

required_access_grants: This is a list of access grant names that are required to access this field. The grant names are always an OR condition. For example, if you listed human_resources and executive under this parameter, users who qualified for human_resources, executive or both would be able to access this field. Note, if the user has access to the field but does NOT have access to the view the field is defined in, the user will not be able to see the field.

sql_distinct_key: This tells Zenlytic that the measure you are calculating here is duplicated, and what field or expression it is unique on. For example, if you have a sales amount that is tied to an order but present in a order lines table, you could set this value to order_id and the type to sum_distinct to correctly sum up the sales amount without double counting. See symmetric aggregates for more information.

measure: This is only used when the metric has the type cumulative. A cumulative metric will sum up that metric over all time, and the measure property specifies which metric to aggregate over all time. For example, you could have a metric of type sum called total_revenue and create a cumulative metric referencing that named cumulative_revenue which calculates the total_revenue metric cumulatively.

filters: This is a list of field filters, which have two properties, field and value. For example, the below field filter equates to the SQL where clause where channel != 'Paid'. Note, you cannot apply filters to measures of type number. You must apply your filters to the input measures, to achieve that result.

- field: channel  value: "-Paid"

canon_date: This is the date to use when trending this metric over time or applying a time period. It defaults to the default_date of the view the metric is in, but you can override it here. When you override it, just use the name of the date field (e.g. use order_at instead of order_at_date which also contains a dimension group).

non_additive_dimension: This property defines a dimension over which the metric cannot be aggregated (usually a time dimension). An example of this type of metric would be MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) where each customer in your database has their MRR as of a single day in the database. To get the right answer, you can't just sum up MRR over all days, you have to take MRR for each customer on the most recent day that customer had an MRR value and then sum that.

For example, let's look at a daily MRR table that includes one row per date of the account, the account's id, the account's plan type, and the plan's MRR in the following columns:

record_dateaccount_idplan_typemrr_value
2022-01-01123Basic$20
2022-01-02123Basic$50
2022-01-03125Basic$20
2022-01-04126Enterprise$100

The Non Additive Dimension has three properties in it.

  • name: This references the fully qualified name of the field you're referencing (e.g. record_date_raw).
  • window_choice: This is either max or min and indicated whether you want to choose the start of period value (min) or the end of period value (max).
  • window_aware_of_query_dimensions: (Optional) This is either true or false. When true, it will include all group by dimensions in the metric's calculation. For example, when calculating inventory you might want the value to be true so that when grouping by product you get the most recent date for each product. In another example, you might want the value to be false if you are calculating account balances because you don't want the most recent date of an account type to influence the balance of a account holder's balance. The default is true.
  • window_groupings (Optional) This is an array of fully qualified field references, which tells Zenlytic which groups to consider specially when finding the start or end of the period
    • Example: If you have MRR, like our example here, you will want to use account_id as the window grouping because if you have account_id X who's most recently recorded day is 2023-01-02 and account_id Y who's most recently recorded day is 2023-01-04, you want to use the mrr_value from 2023-01-02 for account_id X and 2023-01-04 for account_id Y. Window groupings allow you to specify the account_id as a window grouping to achieve that end.

Example 1 (MRR):

- name: account_id  field_type: dimension  type: string  sql: ${TABLE}.id
- name: record  field_type: dimension_group  type: time  sql: ${TABLE}.record_at  timeframes: [raw, date, week, month, year]
- name: mrr  field_type: measure  type: sum  sql: ${TABLE}.mrr_value  non_additive_dimension:    name: record_raw      # This is referencing the raw timestamp of the above dimension group    window_choice: max    window_groupings: [account_id]

Example 2 (Inventory):

- name: snapshot  field_type: dimension_group  type: time  sql: ${TABLE}.snapshot_at  timeframes: [raw, date, week, month, year]
- name: beginning_of_period_inventory_levels  field_type: measure  type: sum  sql: ${TABLE}.inventory_value  non_additive_dimension:    name: snapshot_date      # This is referencing the timestamp truncated to the date of the above dimension group    window_choice: min    window_aware_of_query_dimensions: true     # The default is true

extra: The extra property is like dbt meta property, and you can put whatever additional properties you want in here. For example, under this property you could add a property like this maintainer: "jane doe"

Examples#

The first measure takes the average of price for every order lines row. The second measure, sums up the price value, but it performs the sum uniquely based on each unique order_id instead of every row in the table, which ensures there is no double counting.

version: 1type: viewname: order_lines
sql_table_name: prod.order_linesdefault_date: orderrow_label: Order Line
fields:- name: order_line_id  field_type: dimension  type: string  sql: ${TABLE}.order_line_id  primary_key: yes  hidden: yes
- name: order_id  field_type: dimension  type: string  sql: ${TABLE}.order_id  hidden: yes
- name: price  field_type: dimension  type: number  sql: ${TABLE}.item_price  label: "Item price"  description: "The price we currently have on the item in Shopify"
- name: avg_price  field_type: measure  type: average  # This references the "price" dimension above to calculate the average  sql: ${price} 
- name: total_price_order_level  field_type: measure  type: sum_distinct  sql_distinct_key: ${order_id}  sql: ${price} 
- name: number_of_orders  field_type: measure  type: count_distinct  sql: ${order_id}
- name: cumulative_orders  field_type: measure  type: cumulative  measure: number_of_orders  description: "The unique cumulative number of orders"  value_format_name: decimal_0