What are analytic functions?

Analytic functions are advanced mathematical and statistical calculations that you can use to analyze data and make business decisions. For example, these functions can answer questions such as:

• what are my best selling products?

• how do current sales compare with last year's sales?

• what is the average sales transaction amount in the region with the largest number of sales transactions per year?

Note: Analytic functions are a subset of the SQL functions available in the Oracle database.

In the example below, the Rank Sales item contains an analytic function that calculates the ranked list position of Cities according to sales performance. Using the Rank Sales column, you can see that New York is ranked number 1 with total sales of $85,974.23.

Figure 17-2 Worksheet containing the Rank Sales calculation

Description of the illustration af_rank.gif

You can create analytic functions in the following ways:

• using an easy-to-use template to help you build the function (for more information, see "How to create a new calculation using an analytic function template")

  Note: Discoverer provides easy-to-use templates for the most popular analytic functions (for more information, see "What analytic function templates are available in Discoverer?").

• creating a worksheet calculation and entering an analytic function as the formula text (for more information, see "How to create calculations")