Manage Dimensions

Overview

Data Dimensions let you organize your data monitoring metrics into categories that align with your business context. Instead of sifting through hundreds of individual metrics, you can group related ones into meaningful dimensions that reflect your organization’s data domains, systems, or business processes.

This feature helps you:

• Organize metrics into intuitive categories (e.g., Timeliness, Completeness, Validity)
• Generate accurate reports tailored to different teams and stakeholders
• Simplify maintenance with bulk assignment and overrides

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Key Concepts

Hierarchy of Data Dimensions

Data Dimensions are structured in a hierarchy to ensure consistency and scalability:

• Top-Level Categories: Consists of two fixed groups, Pipeline Reliability and Data Quality (cannot be renamed, reordered, or edited).
• Data Dimensions: Groupings under the top-level categories (e.g., Completeness, Accuracy). Bigeye Admins can create, rename, or delete these.
• Monitor/Metric Types: Metrics, templates, rules, deltas, etc. in Bigeye. The dimension these types fall under in the dimension manager will determine the default dimension for new instances of the Monitor/Metric Type.
• Instances: Individual deployed metrics, deltas, rules, etc. which can be overridden from the default dimension of the Monitor/Metric Type.

Supported Monitor/Metric Types

Data Dimensions apply to all monitor/metric types, including:

• Table-level and column-level metrics (e.g., freshness, volume, row count)
• Grouped metrics

Note: every group in a grouped metric will inherit the data dimension of the monitor/metric type used to create the grouped metric.

• Template metrics
• Custom SQL rules
• Join Rules
• Deltas

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Managing Data Dimensions

Accessing the Data Dimension Manager

• Navigate to Settings > Dimensions
• All users can view dimensions; only Admins can create, edit, or delete them.

Creating and Editing Dimensions

• Admins can:
  • Add up to 15 dimensions (default is 6: Completeness, Validity, Uniqueness, Distributions, Pipeline Reliability, Custom)
  • Rename dimensions as business reporting needs evolve
  • Reorganize metric types under different dimensions
  • Move dimensions between the two top-level categories

Note: Each monitor/metric type must belong to exactly one default dimension and each instance must always belong to exactly one dimension.

Assigning Metrics to Dimensions

• Default assignment: Each monitor/metric type has a default dimension.
• Overrides: Instances can be reassigned at creation or later via the edit workflow.
• Bulk assignment: Admins can select multiple metrics and assign them to a dimension at once.

When reassignment has been completed and you are ready to finalize your choices you will click the Save button in the top right corner.

Deleting Dimensions

• A dimension can only be deleted once all assigned metric types and instances are manually reassigned elsewhere.
• The system prevents deletion if assignments remain, Bigeye will show you a count of remaining objects.
• Once deleted, references to the dimension will be removed from dashboards and scorecards, before it is fully removed, however, historical data remains visible for 90 days.

Assigning Instances to Dimensions

• Upon instance creation/configuration inside Bigeye, you are provided with a field where you can manually select the dimension under which the specific instance is categorized

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Platform Integration

• Dashboard & Scorecards: Automatically update to reflect new or updated dimensions.
• Issues Page: Filter options will update dynamically to your dimension configuration.
• Snowflake Share: Exposes both the DEFAULT_DATA_DIMENSION (for monitor/metric type) and ASSIGNED_DATA_DIMENSION (for instance overrides).
• APIs & SDKs: Support creation, deletion, updates, and overrides of data dimensions (RBAC-enforced).
• Alation Integration: Dimensions flow through to external catalogs for consistent reporting.

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Best Practices

Dimension Strategy

• Avoid overly granular dimensions — balance clarity vs. manageability.
• Review dimensions periodically as priorities and reporting needs change.

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Advanced Features

Bulk Operations

• Move multiple metrics between dimensions simultaneously
• Reassign entire metric templates and their instances
• Organize custom rules, join rules, and deltas efficiently

Revision History & Timelines

• Track when dimensions are created, renamed, moved, or deleted
• Record reassignments of metric types and instances
• Maintain an audit trail to support compliance and root-cause analysis

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Feature Availability

Data Dimensions are available as part of the Bigeye platform and accessible for Admins to edit in Settings.