Formatting Your Results for Easier Consumption
In the world of business intelligence, business analysts often get very specific requirements from the end users on what they want to see in the reports. As data analysts/business intelligence engineers, we want to make sure we have the skills to fulfill that need, for example, by getting into details such as the language the report uses, the decimal precision for the total spending of a customer, to the specific date format for a quarterly payout. These are all things we should gather requirements for from our end users and have the skill to deliver. Creating easily readable results is almost as important as the data itself!
In this chapter, we’ll learn to format a few different fields by going through some examples that display the breadth and flexibility available to us. Starting with dates, as they would be seen in different countries around the world and in the many different day, month, quarter, and year combos possible...
