Advanced features of analytic views

As we have seen so far, an analytic view allows us to use numeric information. We can present salaries, sales amounts, turnover, and all kinds of numbers with an analytic view. We can also join an analytic view to an attribute view, and profit from the metadata they provide, enabling us to describe our numeric information.

Analytic views have a lot more functionality however, making them considerably more powerful. In this section we'll take a look at a few of the functions they provide.

Restricted columns – what they are and how to use them

One feature that an analytic view can provide is a restricted column. This option will create a new column in our view, based upon an existing numeric value, and only populate it for a given line if a specified condition is true.

Note

For readers familiar with the SAP BW BEx reporting suite, this feature is equivalent to a restricted key figure.

The easiest way to understand the concept is to make a restricted column ourselves...