Going deeper into data with drill down

In BI, when we analyze numbers at a deeper level or at a higher level, we speak about drilling. Going deeper is referred to as drill down and vice versa is called drill up. Sometimes, you may also find the term drill across, which refers to a change in the point of view by moving the perspective to a different dimension (or hierarchy).

MicroStrategy uses hierarchies to drill into data. In Chapter 3, Schema Objects – Attributes, we learned how to create a hierarchy from several related attributes: these are called user hierarchies . In addition to those, there is a default system hierarchy that is created automatically with all the attributes in a project.

So, for example, using the time hierarchy we created before, users can drill down from year to month and month to date. It is a very useful feature and users generally like it; as always, a little training can be useful to not get lost in the map.

Getting ready

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