Focus of analysis

As a first step, the mining analysts set the focus of analysis. This means that they define the entities that are under investigation.

The focus of analysis consists of one or more components. For example, if you want to forecast sales for individual stores, there are two focus components. These focus components are store and day because the performance of the stores is analyzed for individual days so that sales forecasting can be done for future days. The table that results from the transformations that are defined in the profile contains one row for each combination of values of the focus components.

In many simpler cases, the focus of analysis is defined by a single level in one of the hierarchies of the input model. If you do store segmentation, the focus is the store level of the store hierarchy. If you analyze Product departments, the appropriate focus is the department level of the product hierarchy.

Forecasting sales for individual stores is slightly more complex: additionally to the store focus (because forecasting is wanted for individual stores), a day focus is also needed (because forecasts are wanted on a daily basis). So the analyst defines the following focus components:

Store (STORE_ID): Defined by the STR_IP_ID column of the table Store
Day (DAY, MONTH, YEAR): Defined by the day level of the week-day hierarchy
For levels that occur in more than one hierarchy, it is irrelevant which hierarchy is used.

In general, a focus component can be defined by a hierarchy level or directly by a column. Each focus component results in one or more columns in the output table.

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