A semantic layer is a business representation of corporate

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted ...

that helps

end user In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product, such as sysops, system administrat ...

s access data autonomously using common business terms managed through

Business semantics management Business semantics management (BSM) encompasses the technology, methodology, organization, and culture that brings business stakeholders together to collaboratively realize the reconciliation of their heterogeneous metadata; and consequently the ...

. A semantic layer maps complex data into familiar business terms such as product, customer, or revenue to offer a unified, consolidated view of data across the organization. By using common business terms, rather than data language, to access, manipulate, and organize information, a semantic layer simplifies the complexity of business data. Business terms are stored as objects in a semantic layer, which are accessed through business views. The semantic layer enables business users to have a common "

look and feel In software design, the look and feel of a graphical user interface comprises aspects of its design, including elements such as colors, shapes, layout, and typefaces (the "look"), as well as the behavior of dynamic elements such as buttons, boxes ...

" when accessing and analyzing data stored in relational databases and

OLAP cube An OLAP cube is a multi-dimensional array of data. Online analytical processing (OLAP) is a computer-based technique of analyzing data to look for insights. The term ''cube'' here refers to a multi-dimensional dataset, which is also sometimes ca ...

s. This is claimed to be core

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical pr ...

(BI) technology that frees users from IT while ensuring correct results. Business Views is a multi-tier system that is designed to enable companies to build comprehensive and specific

business object A business object is an entity within a multi-tiered software application that works in conjunction with the data access and business logic layers to transport data. For example, a "Manager" would be a ''business object'' where its attributes c ...

s that help report designers and end users access the information they require. Business Views is intended to enable people to add the necessary business context to their

data island A data island is a data store, such as on a PDA or other computing device A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic comput ...

s and link them into a single organized Business View for their organization. Semantic layer maps tables to classes and rows to objects.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Semantic Layer Business intelligence