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Objects are the foundational elements of your ontology. They represent key business entities like Customers, Orders, or Products, and map to tables or queries in your data warehouse.
Ontology graph showing objects

Objects in the ontology graph editor

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Creating Objects

Create Object

Create Object

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From the Tables Sidebar

Drag a table from the Tables Sidebar onto the canvas:
  1. Click the tables icon to view synced tables
  2. Search for the table you want
  3. Drag it onto the canvas
  4. Attributes are automatically mapped from columns
Table Preview: Click anywhere on a table row to preview its data before adding it.

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From the Add Object Button

  1. Click the ”+ Create” button in the toolbar
  2. Choose Table or SQL Query as backing
  3. Configure the object name and data source
  4. Attributes are automatically inferred from the schema

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Editing Objects

Edit Object

Edit Object

Click an object on the canvas to open the Object Sidebar with four tabs:

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Overview Tab

  • Edit object name, icon, and color
  • View or change the backing table/query
  • View object size (number of columns)
  • Edit description

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Attributes Tab

  • View all attributes with their types
  • Add new attributes manually
  • Set primary key (click “PK” button - only one allowed)
  • Mark as measure (“meas”) or dimension (“dim”)
  • Delete attributes

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Metrics Tab

Define calculated metrics on the object:
  • Aggregations like SUM, COUNT, AVG
  • Custom formulas
  • Pre-defined KPIs
View and manage relationships to other objects:
  • See all connected links
  • Create new links
  • Edit or delete existing links

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Primary Keys

Important: Only one attribute can be set as the primary key per object. Primary keys are optional - you don’t need them to create objects or links. They’re used as default join keys for links but can be overridden. Setting Primary Key:
  1. Click the object to open the sidebar
  2. Go to “Attributes” tab
  3. Click “PK” next to an attribute
  4. Click again to unset

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Attribute Types

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Derived Attributes

These are additional columns you can add to an object that are calculated across a link. For example:
  • The name of the customer who purchased the order, calculated from the customer object and order → customer link
  • The total number of reports a manager has, calculated as the count of manager → employee links for a given manager
Underneath, these are calculated using correlated subqueries.
If the join path may lead to row multiplication (i.e. a many-to-many, or crossing from the -one side of a many-to-one link), selecting an aggregation is advised. Otherwise, the results will be arbitrary single values (calculated by LIMIT 1).

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Formulaic Attributes

These attributes are used to define formulas or calculations based on the values of other attributes within the ontology. For example, you can create a formulaic attribute that calculates the revenue contribution of a sale by multiplying price and quantity. Formulaic attributes are defined in the SQL dialect of the underlying connector, and can only reference attributes inherent to the backing table or query of the object — they cannot refer to derived or other formulaic attributes. Column references are specified with the primaryTable identifier, not the backing SQL table or query. For example: 
primaryTable.price * primaryTable.quantity
The UI for formulaic attributes is extremely buggy and unintuitive right now. Sorry about that.

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Metrics

Metrics are quantitative measurements or statistics that provide insights into the performance or behavior of your data. These can include counts, sums, averages, percentages, and more. Examples of metrics could be the total number of sales, the average revenue per customer, or the conversion rate of a marketing campaign. To define a metric, you need to select the relevant object and attribute that the metric is based on, along with an aggregation. Then, select the list of dimensions that it is valid to break the metric down by. Metrics are useful for tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and monitoring the impact of certain events or actions within your ontology.