Data blending
In case you want to plot two measures from different cubes on a single chart, or create a calculated measure based on it, you need to create a join between these two cubes. If there's no way to join two cubes other than by time dimension, you need to use the data blending approach.
Data blending is a pattern that allows creating a cube based on two or more existing cubes, and contains a union of the underlying cubes' date to query it together.
For an example omnichannel store which has both online and offline sales, let's
calculate summary metrics for revenue, customer count, etc. We have
retail_orders
cube for offline sales:
cubes:
- name: retail_orders
sql_table: retail_orders
measures:
- name: customer_count
sql: customer_id
type: count_distinct
- name: revenue
sql: amount
type: sum
dimensions:
- name: created_at
sql: created_at
type: time
An online_orders
cube for online sales:
cubes:
- name: online_orders
sql_table: online_orders
measures:
- name: customer_count
sql: user_id
type: count_distinct
- name: revenue
sql: amount
type: sum
dimensions:
- name: created_at
sql: created_at
type: time
Given the above cubes, a data blending cube can be introduced as follows:
cube(`all_sales`, {
sql: `
SELECT
amount,
user_id AS customer_id,
created_at,
'online' AS row_type
FROM (${online_orders.sql()}) AS online
UNION ALL
SELECT
amount,
customer_id,
created_at,
'retail' AS row_type
FROM (${retail_orders.sql()}) AS retail
`,
measures: {
customer_count: {
sql: `customer_id`,
type: `count_distinct`,
},
revenue: {
sql: `amount`,
type: `sum`,
},
online_revenue: {
sql: `amount`,
type: `sum`,
filters: [{ sql: `${CUBE}.row_type = 'online'` }],
},
offline_revenue: {
sql: `amount`,
type: `sum`,
filters: [{ sql: `${CUBE}.row_type = 'retail'` }],
},
online_revenue_percentage: {
sql: `
${online_revenue} /
NULLIF(${online_revenue} + ${offline_revenue}, 0)
`,
type: `number`,
format: `percent`,
},
},
dimensions: {
created_at: {
sql: `created_at`,
type: `time`,
},
revenue_type: {
sql: `row_type`,
type: `string`,
},
},
});
Another use case of the Data Blending approach would be when you want to chart some measures (business related) together and see how they correlate.
Provided we have the aforementioned tables online_orders
and retail_orders
let's assume that we want to chart those measures together and see how they
correlate. You can simply pass the queries to the Cube client, and it will merge
the results which will let you easily display it on the chart.
import cubejs from "@cubejs-client/core";
const API_URL = "http://localhost:4000";
const CUBEJS_TOKEN = "YOUR_TOKEN";
const cubejsApi = cubejs(CUBEJS_TOKEN, {
apiUrl: `${API_URL}/cubejs-api/v1`,
});
const queries = [
{
measures: ["online_orders.revenue"],
timeDimensions: [
{
dimension: "online_orders.created_at",
granularity: "day",
dateRange: ["2020-08-01", "2020-08-07"],
},
],
},
{
measures: ["retail_orders.revenue"],
timeDimensions: [
{
dimension: "retail_orders.created_at",
granularity: "day",
dateRange: ["2020-08-01", "2020-08-07"],
},
],
},
];
const resultSet = await cubejsApi.load(queries);