Profile - Measure

Measure

The measure refers to what is being calculated and is analogous to the value option in an excel pivot table.

By default, the measure box will be empty, and so what will be calculated is the count of records on the table that provides the dimensions.

Types of measure

In general, numeric fields are added as measures – this is because various mathematical functions can be applied to measures - for example, Sum, Min, Max, Avg, StDev.     A measure can be discrete or continuous (i.e., there is no limit on the number of discrete values in the field).

Adding a field of a non-numeric data-type will mean that there are some limitations on the calculations that can be performed.  Non-numeric measure fields are not supported when calculating crosstabs, and only the COUNT function is supported for single and multi-dimensional profiles. 

Date and DateTime fields are treated as numeric fields when added as measures. 

Functions

The function determines the type of calculation that is performed. 

By default, the function is COUNT, which means what is counted are either the non-null records in the table (when there is no measure) or the number of non-null records for the provided measure. 

Other statistical functions can be applied to numeric dimensions or measures: