Base and Computed Measures

A Base Measure refers to a measure where the aggregation is done directly on the raw data from the database. It represents some operation on the actual data available in the warehouse and its storage in its aggregated form in another data store. This is different from metrics that is not stored in physical form, but as functions that can be operated on other measures at viewing time. The choice of base or computed measure is based on the user’s requirement of a design issue on storage optimality as it is on query response speeds desired. These functions defined on other measures are called Computed Measures and dealt separately. It is the metric definition like amount of sales or count of customers.