Basic Concepts

Key workflow

Basic concepts

• Data Source

• Dataset

• Workbook (for Quick BI Advanced Edition and Quick BI Professional Edition)

• Dashboard

• BI Portal

Data Source

Before you analyze data in Quick BI, you must specify a data source that stores your raw data. You can add data sources in the following ways:

• Add a data source from a database

• Upload a local file

For more information about how to create a data source, see Overview.

Dataset

Datasets are created from tables across different data sources. You can edit, move, or delete datasets in the dataset list.

For more information about datasets, see Overview.

Workbook

Workbook is available only in group workspaces of the Advanced and Professional editions. It provides an Excel-like online report designer with flexible report styling, subtotals, custom calculations, and diversified analysis modes. Business users can create complex, information-rich reports, including detail reports, grouping reports, cross reports, master-detail reports, columnar reports, query reports, and fill-in reports.

After you select a dataset, you can analyze the content of the dataset.

For more information about how to create a workbook, see Create a workbook.

Dashboard

Dashboards use a dynamic tile layout to create interactive reports. They support data filtering, querying, and a variety of chart types for data visualization.

For more information about how to create a dashboard, see Dashboard creation overview.

Business Intelligence Portal

A BI portal, also known as a data product, lets you build applications such as a sales analysis system. It brings together analyzed data from Quick BI and supports external links.

For more information, see BI portal overview.

Architecture

The following figure shows the Quick BI architecture.

Quick BI consists of the following main modules:

• Data connection module

  Connects to various cloud data sources, including MaxCompute, RDS (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server), AnalyticDB, AnalyticDB for PostgreSQL, and HybridDB for MySQL. This module provides standard query interfaces for data source metadata and data.

• Data Modeling Module

  Builds OLAP multidimensional analysis models with support for measures (such as business volume), dimensions (such as date-based dimensions), and star-schema data models. You can use calculated fields to reuse data source SQL syntax, and process dimensions and measures to improve modeling efficiency.

• Data visualization module

  • Workbook: provides an Excel-like experience for web-based spreadsheets, with support for row filtering, column filtering, advanced filtering, subtotals, AutoSum, conditional formatting, data export, text processing, and table processing.

  • Dashboards: support drag-and-drop chart controls with more than 40 chart types, including line charts, pie charts, bar charts, funnel charts, geo bubble charts, colored map charts, and metric cards. Dashboards also provide five basic controls: query conditions, TAB, IFRAME, PIC, and text boxes, and support data interaction between charts.

  • BI portal: allows you to drag and drop dashboards to build BI portals. BI portals support embedded links (linked dashboards) and basic settings of the template and the menu bar.

  • Share/Publish: lets you share workbooks, dashboards, and BI portals with authenticated users, and publish dashboards to the Internet for public access.

• Permission management module

  • Organization permission management: manages permissions at the workspace and organization levels with role-based access control. You can authorize different users to view different reports.

  • Row-level permission management: controls access to individual rows in a table, allowing you to authorize users to view specific parts of a report.