Working with Segments¶

Quick Guide

To quickly get started with segments, follow the quick guide on working with segments. This quick guide walks you through defining and applying segments in Lens that can be used during analysis. With segments, you can save time and make your complex filtering logic reusable.

When to use Segments?¶

Complex Filtering Logic: Segments are ideal for defining complex filtering logic in SQL that can be reused across multiple queries.
Reusability: When you observe the reuse of common filters across various queries. Where the value of the filter doesn’t vary much.

How to define Segments?¶

Segments are pre-defined groups of filters. It provides the ability to define Segments (filters) as code within the Lens YAML. They can be used to define repetitively used groups of filters by the stakeholders. Segments are defined within a Lens table’s schema. Utilize the sql parameter to define how a segment filters out a subset of data, ensuring the SQL expression is valid within a WHERE statement.

Use ‘OR’ to define a filter involving multiple columns

An example segment declaration to create a group of commonly used state filters:

segments:
  - name: common_state
    sql: "{TABLE}.state = 'Illinois'"

You can leverage filtering keywords such as ‘LIKE’ to define filtering criteria

Below example Segment filters for records where the state is Illinois or Ohio.

segments:
  - name: common_state
    sql: "{TABLE}.state = 'Illinois' or {TABLE}.state like '%Ohio%'"

You can include logical operators like OR and AND to create dynamic criteria for segments. This is useful when you need to apply filters to more than one column.

Below example Segment filters records where the region is "Midwest" or the sales are greater than 1000.

segments:
  - name: common_state
    sql: "{TABLE}.state = 'Illinois' or {TABLE}.state = 'Ohio'"

Defining row filter policy on Segment¶

Data policies can be defined directly on segments to enforce data governance and compliance. This ensures that access and interaction with different subsets of data are managed effectively. It applies a row filter data policy to show specific data based on user groups.

Let's demonstrate an example by adding the filter policy to the segments section of a table definition:

Example: Filtering rows to show online sales data to 'type-analyst user groups and hide reader user groups.

table: 

  #...

  segments:
    - name: online_sales
      sql: "{TABLE}.order_mode = 'online'"
      meta:
        secure:
          user_groups:
            includes:
              - reader
            excludes:
              - type-analyst