The formula bar provides hints that help you improve performance and understand automatic adjustments that Pigment has made on your formulas.
In some cases it warns about missing or unnecessary Dimensions, so that you can take appropriate action. In other cases it helps users’ understanding by providing context.
This page covers hints flagging formulas with BY, IF and arithmetic expressions. For other kinds of hints, see Dimensionality Hints and Performance Improvement Hints (coming soon).
Find the hints
Hints are available when a 🛈 appears beside the ⨍ indicator or a light bulb appears. See the example below.
Dimension changes caused by BY
It is not always easy to understand which Dimensions will appear in the output after a BY modifier transformation. The Dimensionality Indicator light bulb appears when the Dimensions resulting from the transformation are different from the Metric’s Dimensions.
When you hover your pointer over the indicator, a pop-up opens showing all the hints for your formula. Select Dimensions changes with BY modifier to open details of any Dimensions that were automatically added or removed.
ℹ️ Note
If the Dimensions resulting from the transformation are the same as the Metric's Dimensions, no hint is displayed.
If no aggregation or allocation operator is specified in a formula featuring the BY modifier, the Dimensionality Indicator light bulb also appears. The hint explains which default operator (SUM or CONSTANT) was automatically added by Pigment.
Dimension alignment in IF expressions
For formulas using an IF expression, which have the “Value if true” argument specified, but the “Value if false or BLANK” argument not specified, the Dimensionality Indicator light bulb appears whenever the “Logical Test” argument uses Dimensions that are different from those involved in the “Value if true” argument.
The hints explain the output of the IF statement, when:
The “Value if true” argument is a subset of the Logical Test.
One argument’s Dimensions are neither a subset nor a superset of the other.
The Logical Test involves Dimensions and “Value if true” Dimensions have an empty intersection.
Where Pigment addresses a Dimension difference, the hints:
Explain which Dimensions were added for each argument.
List all the Dimensions of the
IFexpression’s output as a whole.
Dimension hints in arithmetic expressions
Pigment provides hints when a formula contains the arithmetic operators +, -, *, or /, and both of the below are true:
the two sides of the operator reference Metrics (i.e. they have formulas of type
MetricA * MetricB).the two Metrics have a different number of Dimensions.
Pigment resolves the formula and provides a hint explaining how Dimensions were aligned and how blank values were handled.