See Beyond Numbers – QlikView’s Dimensions and Measures Reveal the Story

In QlikView, dimensions and measures are terms used to describe data fields within a data model. Dimensions are data fields that represent discrete categories or attributes of data, such as product names or geographical locations. Measures are data fields that represent numerical values or metrics, such as sales or profit.

Dimensions and measures are used to create objects and charts in QlikView. For example, you might use a dimension such as product name as the x-axis of a chart and a measure such as sales as the y-axis.

In QlikView, dimensions are typically used to group and filter data, while measures are used to perform calculations and aggregations.

For example, you might use a dimension such as product category to group sales data by product category, and then use a measure such as total sales to calculate the total sales for each category.

In QlikView, data is organized into two main types of fields: dimensions and measures.

1. Dimensions: Dimensions are the fields that describe the characteristics of the data. They are used to group and categorize the data, and they are typically used to create the rows and columns in a table or chart. Examples of dimensions include product name, customer name, and date.
2. Measures: Measures are the fields that contain the numerical values that are used to aggregate or calculate data. They are typically used to create the values or data points in a table or chart. Examples of measures include sales, profit, and quantity.

In a QlikView data model, dimensions and measures are used together to create a hierarchical structure for the data. The dimensions provide the context for the measures, and the measures provide the numerical values that are used to aggregate and analyze the data.

For example, in a sales report, the dimensions might be product, customer, and date, while the measures might be sales and profit. This allows the user to analyze the data by product, customer, and date, and to see the sales and profit values for each combination.

Dimensions can be further divided into two types, Discreet and Continuous. Discreet dimension can be considered as categorical data while Continuous dimension can be considered as numerical data.

Measures can also be divided into two types, Aggregated and Calculated. Aggregated measures are the ones that are directly available in the data source, for example, Sales, Quantity, etc. Calculated measures are the ones that are calculated based on the data available, for example, Profit = Sales – Cost.