Any edit operation, such as transforming data, must take place within a project rather than in a data set. Creating a new project also provides several other features that are not available when exploring a data set. In a project you can:
- Create and save project pages in Discover.
- Add multiple data sets, and link them in the Data Set Manager editor. In other words, a project provides the structure to join, aggregate, and transform multiple data sets. Note however, that a project does not make a copy of a data set.
- Modify attribute metadata in the Attribute Groups editor. For example, you can preserve changes for display name settings or dimension settings as part of project.
- Create and modify data views in the .
There are several ways to create a project:
- From the Catalog, you can immediately create a new project before you explore or transform the data. This is a good option if you know you are going to make changes to the data and prefer to create a new project right away. In other words, you typically do this early in the discovery process.
- From Explore, you can create a new project after examining the source data. You typically do this later in the discovery process.
- Or, you can create a new project only after being prompted by Studio during an edit operation that you want to perform. You typically do this only if required.
If you have a role of Administrator, Power User, or User, you can create new projects. If you only have the Restricted User role, you cannot create projects.