Incorta Glossary

To help familiarize you with the Incorta environment, here are a few key terms and concepts you may encounter while getting started with the product.

Alias: An alternate name assigned to a table that is used in joins and dashboards to be able to refer to a single table multiple times.

Analytics Service: A Java process that implements the in-memory direct data mapping (DDM) engine for the platform, answers all incoming queries of the data, and retrieves updates made through the loader service.

Applied Filter An Incorta filter that restricts the data rows being evaluated on a dashboard.

Attribute: In dimension modeling, a type of column that is used to classify and describe a specific group of values. For example, attributes of a customer might include first name, last name, gender, or city.

Attribute Value: The value associated with a specific attribute. For example, values for a “first name” attribute might include Sam, Jane, or Carlo.

Base Table: A table used to specify a join path between two tables.

Bookmarks: In Incorta, a set of saved filter settings and values that you can access without having to repeat the filter selection process.

Business Schema: A simplified version of a physical schema used to make the data more accessible for business users. It can streamline the dashboard building process. It contains a flattened grouping of tables and columns, where the user can remove columns, edit labels, and organize views into dimensions, measures, and calculations.

Cluster Management Console (CMC): A web application used to manage infrastructures, loader and analytic services, and tenants.

Child Table: A table containing detailed data that is subordinate to a parent table; has a foreign key referencing a parent table. For example, “Order Line Items” is a child of “Order Headers”.

Dashboard: A collection of pre-configured or user-defined metrics,statistics, insights, and visualizations used to present a set of data.

Data Alerts: An email notification sent to a list of recipients when a set of conditions on a dashboard is triggered.

Data Source: An external database or application that you connect to from Incorta Analytics so that the data can be extracted or queried in-place.

Dimension: In a star-schema, a table that contains a structure of attributes.

Drilldown: The act of applying one or more filters to limit the scope of your results, and switching the view to a more detailed representation. For example, clicking on a pie chart typically applies a filter for that pie slice, and switches the view to another visualization, perhaps a table.

Filter: A tool that limits the presentation of your data and enables the user to focus on specific data based on certain conditions. An attribute with parameters equals a filter.

Formula: An expression that computes values to populate a new column. Can be based on existing columns.

Incorta Node: Any server where the Incorta platform is installed and has at least one Incorta service.

Insight: A component of a dashboard, table, chart, key performance indicator (KPI), or gauge.

Join: Metadata that associates two tables together, typically in a parent and child arrangement.

Key: A table column function used to uniquely identify each record. Keys are used for table joins and for incremental refresh of data.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Insight: A measurement of performance for a business process. In the analytics domain, typically a visualization that presents a single value.

Level-Based Measure: A calculation that aggregates values at multiple levels in a self-joined table. For example, computing the average salary in a hierarchy of employees.

Load Filter: A filter used to restrict the data that is extracted from data sources in order to conserve storage

Loaded Query Schema: A schema that contains only query tables specific to a user’s requirements when building dashboards.

Loaded Source Schema: A schema containing all the tables from the data source. It can be loaded fully in memory, partially in memory and partially in the staging area, or fully in the staging area.

Loader Service: The process that manages data loading from source systems.

Local Files: Files uploaded to Incorta from local or cloud storage. They are “local” to the Incorta instance as opposed to needing a connector.

Materialized Views: A materialized view is a database table that stores the result of a query or code execution. In Incorta, materialized views are populated from either a SQL query or Python code. They execute against the embedded Apache Spark server and are used for complex data transformations and precomputation.

Measure: A schema column used to hold quantifiable values that are typically summed, averaged, counted, etc.

Parameter: A key-value pair that consists of an attribute and a value, typically used in Incorta in filters.

Prompts: Allows users to specify attributes to be shown to the user on the dashboard filter bar.

Query Plan: Shows how a query optimizer will traverse the relationships between tables in order to most efficiently return results of a query.

Scheduler: The tool used to view, create, or delete scheduling jobs for dashboards, schema loads, and data alerts.

Schema: A collection of tables that provide the structure and semantics for queries, insights and dashboards.

Table: A structure that organizes data into rows and columns. Contrast with “schema”, “table” usually refers to stored data as opposed to a specification of data.

Tenant Management Tool (TMT): A command line tool used to manage Incorta tenant metadata.

Visualizations: An illustration of data presented in graphical form such as a pie chart, line graph, or bar chart.

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