3 Jokers for Building a Powerful Semantic Layer

My 3 [+1] jokers with templates for building a powerful analytical semantic layer

12 min read

16 hours ago

TL;DR:

My 3 straightforward and one hidden Joker are:

Joker #1: Pattern-Driven Repository Structure 🗂️
Joker #2: Organized Code 👩🏻‍💻
Joker #3: (Non-) Embedded Documentation 📜
[🃏 Hidden Joker: Refinement Loop 🃏]

Semantic layer in BI tools with templates — “***Simple*** *and* ***Consistent.*** — This is how I would describe to someone the 2 most important dimensions to keep in mind when building a semantic layer.” [Photo by Zuzana Ruttkay on Unsplash]

According to Wikipedia, the term semantic, which is the study of linguistic meaning, examines what meaning is.

Or per se — how words get their meaning and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts [1].

Although the term semantic is straightforwardly explained, I honestly had to dwell for a while on the part “the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts”, because I wanted to re-use it to explain the semantic layer in analytics.

After rereading it, my explanation goes as follows:

Similar to semantics in the linguistic context, the semantic layer in analytics is about making data…