What is Composer?
AtScale Composer is a special view of a dataset. Using Composer, a cube modeler can examine a dataset in depth, viewing the data and working with columns. You can easily transform columns (including text columns) from one data type to another, and values from one form to another.
Often, fact tables in a model do not contain values in a format that business users need. In these cases, cube modelers need a way to transform existing values in the fact tables into more consumable values for business analysis. For example, you can transform a Date column of type String to Date or DateTime to facilitate analysis.
Composer provides a direct and guided approach to transforming columnar data. Composer also supports regular expression (regex) extract and replace functions to help parse and process field values.
Transformations and date/time formats
The transformation options available depend on the data warehouse and supported SQL engines. In general, they include:
| Original Data Type (down)/Desired Data Type (across) | Boolean | Int | String | Float | Date | DateTime |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Int | X | X | X | X (if UNIX timestamp) | X (if UNIX timestamp) | |
| String | X | X | X | X | X | |
| Float | X | X | ||||
| Date* | X | X | ||||
| DateTime* | X | X |
The available date and time formats also depend on the data warehouse and supported SQL engines.
| Date Format | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| YYYY | Four-digit year | 1999 |
| YY | Two-digit year | 25 |
| M or MM | Month number (two digits) | 12 |
| MMM | Month (abbreviation) | Feb |
| MMMM | Month name | February |
| W | Week of year | 52 |
| D or DD | Two-digit day of month | 28 |
| dddd | Day name | Sunday |
| H or HH | 24-hour clock (two digits) | 22 |
| h or hh | 12-hour clock (two digits) | 7 |
| m or mm | Minutes (two digits) | 31 |
| s or ss | Seconds (two digits) | 29 |