The Semantic Layer
for every data app

Connect data silos, drive consistent metrics, and power your AI and analytics with context.

RamSoft logoSecurity Scorecard logoCloud Academy logoIBM logoIntuit logoWalmart logoDrift logoInfoblox logo

What is a Semantic Layer?

A semantic layer is a middleware between your data source and your data application. Cube is an API-first, four-part semantic layer that enables data engineers and developers to make their data consistent, secure, performant, and accessible across every application.
More about Cube’s Semantic Layer

How does Cube’s Semantic Layer work?

Data Modeling

With an upstream semantic layer, create a centralized, single source of truth—with consistent metrics you only need to define once.

Cube uses Data Models to model raw data into meaningful business definitions and pre-aggregate data for optimal results. More about Data Modeling

  • YAML
  • JS
cubes:
- name: active_users
sql: SELECT user_id, timestamp FROM events
measures:
- name: weekly_active
sql: id
type: count_distinct
rolling_window:
trailing: 7 day
offset: start
dimensions:
- name: time
type: time
sql: timestamp

Data Access Control

Cube's semantic layer coordinates access control upstream of data applications—so that only the right people have access to the right metrics.

In Cube, authorization is based on the security context. Authentication tokens are generated based on your API secret. More about Data Access Control

animation

Caching

Cube’s caching layer ensures that every downstream app stays updated with the latest information—cost-effectively and with low latency.

Cube provides a two-level caching system: in-memory cache and configurable pre-aggregations. More about Caching

Caching

Instant APIs

Integrate with data visualization tools and business intelligence dashboards, and bind to popular front-end frameworks to power custom interfaces.

Cube’s SQL, REST, and GraphQL APIs provide the universal compatibility data engineers and developers need. More about APIs

  • SQL
  • REST
  • GraphQL
SELECT
DATE_TRUNC('day', time) AS day,
MEASURE(weekly_active)
FROM active_users
WHERE time >= '2021-01-01' AND time < '2021-01-07'
GROUP BY day

What are the use cases of a Semantic Layer?

The use cases of a semantic layer span from unifying your organization’s knowledge base to wildly improving application performance, from cutting down app development time to creating beautiful, data-rich UX/UI—and then some.

Customer stories

Cloud Academy

With Cube, we’ve been able to speed up time to release a new data model to production by 5x and decrease analytics downtime by 90%.

Cyndx

Cube can do whatever your engineers want. They can build your analytics faster. There’s just not another tool out there that would fill in the blank for what we need.HTTP layer and abstraction over SQL.

Cuboh

With Cube, we’ve reduced the time required to generate real-time and historical reports from 10’s of seconds to less than 2, while reducing our spending on hosting by almost 80%.

Jobber

Cube really stood out as a great fit for our use case. We were able to level‑up our data infrastructure without needing to build a full‑blown and expensive data pipeline.

COTA

The Cube platform reduces our development time significantly and integrates easily with data from various sources. The Cube team is collaborative and quick to respond to our requests and their open source ethos keeps things transparent.

ShopBack

Cube provides us with the framework and tools to build our custom data visualization platform with minimal effort. Our full-stack developers are able to get productive quickly, optimizing performance wherever possible.

Latest in Cube

Signup for the Cube newsletter and get updates.

Start using Cube