Table of Contents

Load and Inspect a Metric View

  • 2026-07-02
  • Greg Baldini
Applies to:
  • ❌ Tabular Editor 2
  • Tabular Editor 3 (Available since 3.25.0)
    ❌ Desktop
    ❌ Business
    ✔ Enterprise

This how-to demonstrates how to load a Databricks Metric View into Tabular Editor and explore its structure using C# scripts. This is the foundational skill for all other Metric View operations.

Note

These how-tos target Tabular Editor 3.26.2 and later. Earlier versions do not support the v1.1 Metric View features shown here.

Load the sample Metric View for these code samples

Before starting, make sure you have Tabular Editor 3 open and have a Tabular model opened, or create a new model.

This how-to uses a sample e-commerce Metric View representing sales data with three dimension tables (product, customer, date) joined to a fact table (orders). Use either method below to load it (either "download and load" or "copy and deserialize"), then follow along with the rest of this how-to. You can run either command in the same C# script as the rest of this example, or you can run it first, in its own C# script, and the rest of the example in its own C# script.

Download sample-metricview.yaml and load it by path:

SemanticBridge.MetricView.Load("C:/path/to/sample-metricview.yaml");

Access the loaded Metric View

After loading, the Metric View is available in any script as SemanticBridge.MetricView.Model. This returns a Metric View View object, the root of the Metric View object graph.

var sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
var view = SemanticBridge.MetricView.Model;

sb.AppendLine($"Version: {view.Version}");
sb.AppendLine($"Source (fact table): {view.Source}");
Output(sb.ToString());

Output

Version: 1.1
Source (fact table): sales.fact.orders

Inspect Metric View joins (dimension tables)

The Metric View Joins property contains the dimension tables joined to the fact.

var sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
var view = SemanticBridge.MetricView.Model;

sb.AppendLine($"Number of joins: {view.Joins.Count}");
sb.AppendLine("");

foreach (var join in view.Joins)
{
    sb.AppendLine($"Join: {join.Name}");
    sb.AppendLine($"  Source: {join.Source}");
    sb.AppendLine($"  On: {join.On}");
    sb.AppendLine($"  Cardinality: {join.Cardinality?.ToString() ?? "ManyToOne (default)"}");
    sb.AppendLine("");
}

Output(sb.ToString());

Output:

Number of joins: 3

Join: product
  Source: sales.dim.product
  On: source.product_id = product.product_id
  Cardinality: ManyToOne

Join: customer
  Source: sales.dim.customer
  On: source.customer_id = customer.customer_id
  Cardinality: ManyToOne

Join: date
  Source: sales.dim.date
  On: source.order_date = date.date_key
  Cardinality: ManyToOne

Inspect Metric View fields

The Metric View Fields property contains all field definitions.

var sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
var view = SemanticBridge.MetricView.Model;

sb.AppendLine($"Number of fields: {view.Fields.Count}");
sb.AppendLine("");

foreach (var field in view.Fields)
{
    sb.AppendLine($"{field.Name,-20} <- {field.Expr}");
}

Output(sb.ToString());

Output:

Number of fields: 6

product_name         <- product.product_name
product_category     <- product.category
customer_segment     <- customer.segment
order_date           <- date.full_date
order_year           <- date.year
order_month          <- date.month_name

Inspect Metric View measures

The Metric View Measures property contains all Metric View measure definitions with their aggregation expressions.

var sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
var view = SemanticBridge.MetricView.Model;

sb.AppendLine($"Number of measures: {view.Measures.Count}");
sb.AppendLine("");

foreach (var measure in view.Measures)
{
    sb.AppendLine($"{measure.Name,-20} = {measure.Expr}");
}

Output(sb.ToString());

Output:

Number of measures: 6

total_revenue        = SUM(revenue)
gross_margin         = SUM(revenue) - SUM(cost)
order_count          = COUNT(*)
avg_order_value      = AVG(revenue)
revenue_to_budget    = (SUM(revenue) - SUM(budget)) / SUM(budget)
unique_customers     = COUNT(DISTINCT customer_id)

Generate a complete summary

Here is a complete script that outputs a formatted summary of the entire Metric View.

var sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
var view = SemanticBridge.MetricView.Model;

sb.AppendLine("METRIC VIEW SUMMARY");
sb.AppendLine("===================");
sb.AppendLine("");
sb.AppendLine($"Version: {view.Version}");
sb.AppendLine($"Fact Source: {view.Source}");
sb.AppendLine("");

// Joins
sb.AppendLine($"JOINS ({view.Joins.Count})");
sb.AppendLine("---------");
foreach (var join in view.Joins)
{
    sb.AppendLine($"  {join.Name,-15} -> {join.Source}");
}
sb.AppendLine("");

// Fields
sb.AppendLine($"FIELDS ({view.Fields.Count})");
sb.AppendLine("--------------");
foreach (var field in view.Fields)
{
    sb.AppendLine($"  {field.Name,-20} <- {field.Expr}");
}
sb.AppendLine("");

// Measures
sb.AppendLine($"MEASURES ({view.Measures.Count})");
sb.AppendLine("------------");
foreach (var measure in view.Measures)
{
    sb.AppendLine($"  {measure.Name,-20} = {measure.Expr}");
}

Output(sb.ToString());

Output

METRIC VIEW SUMMARY
===================

Version: 1.1
Fact Source: sales.fact.orders

JOINS (3)
---------
  product         -> sales.dim.product
  customer        -> sales.dim.customer
  date            -> sales.dim.date

FIELDS (6)
--------------
  product_name         <- product.product_name
  product_category     <- product.category
  customer_segment     <- customer.segment
  order_date           <- date.full_date
  order_year           <- date.year
  order_month          <- date.month_name

MEASURES (6)
------------
  total_revenue        = SUM(revenue)
  gross_margin         = SUM(revenue) - SUM(cost)
  order_count          = COUNT(*)
  avg_order_value      = AVG(revenue)
  revenue_to_budget    = (SUM(revenue) - SUM(budget)) / SUM(budget)
  unique_customers     = COUNT(DISTINCT customer_id)

Next steps

Now that you can load and inspect a Metric View, you can:

See also