Table of Contents

Serialize a Metric View to YAML

  • 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 serialize a Metric View back to YAML format, either as a string or saved to a file.

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");

Serialize to a string

Use Serialize() to get the YAML representation. This simply re-serializes the YAML you loaded above.

var yaml = SemanticBridge.MetricView.Serialize();

var sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
sb.AppendLine("YAML output:");
sb.AppendLine("------------");
sb.AppendLine(yaml);
Output(sb.ToString());

Output

YAML output:
------------
version: 1.1
source: sales.fact.orders
joins:
- name: product
  source: sales.dim.product
  on: source.product_id = product.product_id
  cardinality: many_to_one
- name: customer
  source: sales.dim.customer
  on: source.customer_id = customer.customer_id
  cardinality: many_to_one
- name: date
  source: sales.dim.date
  on: source.order_date = date.date_key
  cardinality: many_to_one
fields:
- name: product_name
  expr: product.product_name
- name: product_category
  expr: product.category
  display_name: Product Category
- name: customer_segment
  expr: customer.segment
- name: order_date
  expr: date.full_date
- name: order_year
  expr: date.year
- name: order_month
  expr: date.month_name
measures:
- name: total_revenue
  expr: SUM(revenue)
  display_name: Total Revenue
  format:
    type: currency
    decimal_places:
      type: exact
      places: 2
    currency_code: USD
- name: gross_margin
  expr: SUM(revenue) - SUM(cost)
- name: order_count
  expr: COUNT(*)
- name: avg_order_value
  expr: AVG(revenue)
- name: revenue_to_budget
  expr: (SUM(revenue) - SUM(budget)) / SUM(budget)
  display_name: Revenue vs Budget
  format:
    type: percentage
    decimal_places:
      type: max
      places: 1
- name: unique_customers
  expr: COUNT(DISTINCT customer_id)

Save to a file

Use Save(path) to write the YAML directly to disk. This will write the Metric View you loaded above to disk.

var path = "C:/MetricViews/updated-sales-metrics.yaml";

SemanticBridge.MetricView.Save(path);

Output($"Metric View saved to: {path}");

Round-trip workflow

A common workflow is to load, modify, and save a Metric View:

var view = SemanticBridge.MetricView.Model;

// set a display name on a field, then serialize to confirm it round-trips
view.Fields["order_month"].DisplayName = "Order Month";

var yaml = SemanticBridge.MetricView.Serialize();

var sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
sb.AppendLine("Modified YAML:");
sb.AppendLine("--------------");
sb.AppendLine(yaml);
Output(sb.ToString());

Output:

Modified YAML:
--------------
version: 1.1
source: sales.fact.orders
joins:
- name: product
  source: sales.dim.product
  on: source.product_id = product.product_id
  cardinality: many_to_one
- name: customer
  source: sales.dim.customer
  on: source.customer_id = customer.customer_id
  cardinality: many_to_one
- name: date
  source: sales.dim.date
  on: source.order_date = date.date_key
  cardinality: many_to_one
fields:
- name: product_name
  expr: product.product_name
- name: product_category
  expr: product.category
  display_name: Product Category
- name: customer_segment
  expr: customer.segment
- name: order_date
  expr: date.full_date
- name: order_year
  expr: date.year
- name: order_month
  expr: date.month_name
  display_name: Order Month
measures:
- name: total_revenue
  expr: SUM(revenue)
  display_name: Total Revenue
  format:
    type: currency
    decimal_places:
      type: exact
      places: 2
    currency_code: USD
- name: gross_margin
  expr: SUM(revenue) - SUM(cost)
- name: order_count
  expr: COUNT(*)
- name: avg_order_value
  expr: AVG(revenue)
- name: revenue_to_budget
  expr: (SUM(revenue) - SUM(budget)) / SUM(budget)
  display_name: Revenue vs Budget
  format:
    type: percentage
    decimal_places:
      type: max
      places: 1
- name: unique_customers
  expr: COUNT(DISTINCT customer_id)

Next steps

See also