What are Subject Areas and Columns

A subject area contains folders, measure columns, attribute columns, hierarchical columns, and hierarchy levels that represent information about the areas of an organization's business or about groups of users with an organization. Subject areas usually have names that correspond to the types of information that they contain, such as Recruiting, Onboarding, and Performance Management.

Note: In the 13B release there will only be a Recruiting subject area.

A subject area corresponds to the presentation layer in an Oracle BI metadata repository. In a repository, the subject area is the highest-level object in the presentation layer and represents the view of the data that end users see when they create or edit an analyses.

Individuals who design and build metadata repositories (Oracle Administrators) create subject areas using the Oracle BI Administration Tool. Generally, rather than creating one large subject area for their company's data, they create multiple smaller subject areas. This enables them to provide a particular group of users or a particular area of a company with the most important data that they need in one small subject area and the less important data in one or more related subject areas created from the same business model layer. Having these smaller subject areas makes it easier for users to find the data they need. It also makes it easier to maintain the data.

Note: The individuals who design and build metadata repositories can specify that a subject area, folder (and its children), or column (both attribute and hierarchical) is to be hidden. A hidden subject area, folder, or column is not visible in the Subject Areas pane but is visible elsewhere, such as in an analysis or saved filter contents. (Because the object is still visible elsewhere, hiding a subject area, folder, or column in this way is not a solution for security or access control.)If the criteria of an existing analysis includes a subject area, folder, or column that is subsequently hidden, the analysis is still accessible but the subject area, folder, or column is no longer visible in the Subject Areas pane of the Analysis editor: Criteria tab.

Columns contain the individual pieces of data that an analysis returns. Columns usually have names that indicate the types of information that they contain, such as Account or Contact. Together with filters and selection steps, columns determine what data an analysis contains.

Typically, when you query a single subject area, all the measure columns that are exposed in that subject area are compatible with all the attribute columns and hierarchical columns that are exposed in the same subject area.

For an analysis to return data, you must select at least one column to include in the analysis.