Defining Table Descriptors

You make data available to visualizations by mapping the Table instances that contain the data to Table Descriptors in a Business Area. Any one visualization can access data through one and only one Business Area. The more Table Descriptors you include in a Business Area, the more data is accessible to a single visualization.

However, system performance during visualization creation improves by having fewer Table Descriptors in the Business Area. Therefore, you may want to define more Business Areas with many different combinations of Table Descriptors.

Business Areas have source Table Descriptors only. They can read data but they cannot write data to Tables instances.

If you do not want data from a particular Table instance Column available to visualizations, remove the Column from the Table Descriptor that is mapped to that Table instance.

You can map Business Area Table Descriptors to Table instances in any Work Area.

If the Table instances to which you want to map a Business Area's Table Descriptors already exist, the simplest way to add and map Table Descriptors to the Business Area is to use the Table Descriptors from Existing Table Instances job from the Actions drop-down list. See Creating Table Descriptors from Table Instances and Simultaneously Mapping Them for further information.

Note:

Set the SAS Library Name of the source Table Descriptor to $REPINIT if you want to enable queries from the OBIEE repository's Repository Init Block to access Table instances mapped to this Table Descriptor. These queries fetch data from the Oracle LSH Table instances at user-defined refresh intervals to initialize Repository Variables.

If you do not set the SAS Library Name to $REPINIT, OBIEE cannot access the mapped Table instances and the automatic, periodic OBIEE repository queries will fail.

For additional information about Table Descriptors see the following sections:

• About Table Descriptors

• Creating a Table Descriptor

• Mapping Table Descriptors to Table Instances