Dimensions

Welcome! This is a short demo of the Dimensions object within the AVEVA BI Gateway Model Builder.

A dimension provides contextual information to measures in the model.

Each dimension typically stores related information.

In this video, we will look at how to create a basic or a static dimension.

Let us look at how to create a basic dimension.

Go to the Floating Action Button (FAB) and click Dimension.

A new dimension appears.

Enter the name and description.

Next, go to Fields and select the pencil icon.

This step is important as we are now adding a data source to the dimension.

Select the data source icon.

Search for the data source and click the checkbox.

The search result includes the custom queries within data sources and SQL table as well.

Select the required data source.

For this example, let us choose the Asset data source.

Click to select the Preview Source Data button.

The table set of the custom query appears.

Click OK.

The next step is to add fields to the dimension.

You can map the dimension fields to source data item fields.

You have to design the dimension by defining field name and map to the field name returned by the custom query selected.

As a best practice but still optional, it is recommended to keep the field name the same as the name provided from the custom query.

Define the fields that will become the primary key or contribute to a composite key, by clicking the toggle button.

The combination of the fields should contribute to the uniqueness of the record.

A combination of keys is called a composite key.

Once this is over, our Basic Dimension ‘Asset’ is created.

Since it is a basic dimension and there is no time-related information to the asset, you can select the appropriate refresh rate.

The options under the Advanced section are used for time-defining dimensions.

While you can use the Filter Expression option under the Filter section, it is less time-consuming to filter out data from the level of the data source into the custom query itself, rather than applying the filter on top of the whole result set returned by the data source, which subsequently eliminates more data.

The next step is to deploy the dimension.

The dimension has now changed from yellow to green which indicates that it is well configured, deployed and executed.

In this video, we will look at how to create a time-defining dimension, and then how to link two dimensions in a measure.

The initial dimension-creating process is the same as basic settings of the dimension:

Go to the Floating Action Button (FAB) and click Dimension.

Enter the name and description.

Go to Fields and select the pencil icon.

Then, select the data source icon.

Search for the data source and click the checkbox.

Select the required data source.

For this example, let us choose the Work Order data source.

Click to select the Preview Source Data button.

The table set of the custom query appears.

Click OK.

The next step is to add fields to the time-defining dimension.

The WorkOrderID custom query retrieves and returns records in an organized and timely manner, based on the StartTime and EndTime specified.

Hence, you will have to the make Plant, Asset, and also StartTime to contribute to the uniqueness of the composite keys.

Go to the Advanced section of the dimension and select the Time Slicing checkbox.

This is important, as the dimension is a time-contextual contributor to the measure and enforces the measure calculation to be time-sliced as per the work order events.

The Incremental Update is optional but recommended for a large data set.

You can backfill the dimension from a specified date called Data Collection Start.

In BI Gateway, you have to define the relationship between the time defining dimension and the Asset dimension under the Links section, if they have a common field that needs to be mapped from each other.

This step is particularly important to enable the ContextLink feature in a measure object.

To create a new link, go to the Links section of the dimension selected.

In this video, we are still at the WorkOrder_TimeDefiningDimension.

Click the plus icon and rename as required.

The default name contains ‘FK’ which means foreign key, which is the opposite of the primary key.

The Foreign key points to the destination dimension, which in this case is the Asset_Dimension.

Choose and verify the dimension fields.

The link should be well configured when you have to define the context of a measure.

Create a measure and go to the Context section.

Select the dimensions to define the measure context.

Click the toggle button to enable the link.

It is crucial to have earlier defined the dimension link before, as we did in this video.

This brings us to the end of our dimensions object demo video.

Thank you.