Unity Catalog Metric Views

Define reusable, governed business metrics in YAML that separate measure definitions from dimension groupings for flexible querying.

When to Use

Use this skill when:

• Defining standardized business metrics (revenue, order counts, conversion rates)
• Building KPI layers shared across dashboards, Genie, and SQL queries
• Creating metrics with complex aggregations (ratios, distinct counts, filtered measures)
• Defining window measures (moving averages, running totals, period-over-period, YTD)
• Modeling star or snowflake schemas with joins in metric definitions
• Enabling materialization for pre-computed metric aggregations

Prerequisites

• Databricks Runtime 17.2+ (for YAML version 1.1)
• SQL warehouse with CAN USE permissions
• SELECT on source tables, CREATE TABLE + USE SCHEMA in the target schema

Quick Start

Inspect Source Table Schema

Before authoring a metric view, inspect the source tables. Use discover-schema as the default — one call returns columns, types, sample rows, null counts, and row count. If you only know the schema, list tables first with query "SHOW TABLES IN ...".

databricks experimental aitools tools discover-schema catalog.schema.orders catalog.schema.customers

For dimensions and measures, probe distribution beyond sampling — cardinality of candidate dimensions, min/max/percentiles for measures, top categorical values. Write aggregate SQL through databricks experimental aitools tools query --warehouse <WH> "...". Both commands auto-pick the default warehouse; set DATABRICKS_WAREHOUSE_ID or pass --warehouse <ID> to override.

Create a Metric View

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW catalog.schema.orders_metrics
WITH METRICS
LANGUAGE YAML
AS $$
  version: 1.1
  source: catalog.schema.orders
  comment: "Orders KPIs for sales analysis"
  filter: order_date > '2020-01-01'
  dimensions:
    - name: Order Month
      expr: DATE_TRUNC('MONTH', order_date)
      comment: "Month of order"
    - name: Order Status
      expr: CASE
        WHEN status = 'O' THEN 'Open'
        WHEN status = 'P' THEN 'Processing'
        WHEN status = 'F' THEN 'Fulfilled'
        END
      comment: "Human-readable order status"
  measures:
    - name: Order Count
      expr: COUNT(1)
    - name: Total Revenue
      expr: SUM(total_price)
      comment: "Sum of total price"
    - name: Revenue per Customer
      expr: SUM(total_price) / COUNT(DISTINCT customer_id)
      comment: "Average revenue per unique customer"
$$

Query a Metric View

All measures must use the MEASURE() function. SELECT * is NOT supported.

SELECT
  `Order Month`,
  `Order Status`,
  MEASURE(`Total Revenue`) AS total_revenue,
  MEASURE(`Order Count`) AS order_count
FROM catalog.schema.orders_metrics
WHERE extract(year FROM `Order Month`) = 2024
GROUP BY ALL
ORDER BY ALL

Reference Files

SQL Operations

Create Metric View

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW catalog.schema.orders_metrics
WITH METRICS
LANGUAGE YAML
AS $$
  version: 1.1
  comment: "Orders KPIs for sales analysis"
  source: catalog.schema.orders
  filter: order_date > '2020-01-01'
  dimensions:
    - name: Order Month
      expr: DATE_TRUNC('MONTH', order_date)
      comment: "Month of order"
    - name: Order Status
      expr: status
  measures:
    - name: Order Count
      expr: COUNT(1)
    - name: Total Revenue
      expr: SUM(total_price)
      comment: "Sum of total price"
$$;

Query Metric View

SELECT
  `Order Month`,
  MEASURE(`Total Revenue`) AS total_revenue,
  MEASURE(`Order Count`) AS order_count
FROM catalog.schema.orders_metrics
WHERE extract(year FROM `Order Month`) = 2024
GROUP BY ALL
ORDER BY ALL
LIMIT 100;

Describe Metric View

DESCRIBE TABLE EXTENDED catalog.schema.orders_metrics;

-- Or get YAML definition
SHOW CREATE TABLE catalog.schema.orders_metrics;

Grant Access

GRANT SELECT ON VIEW catalog.schema.orders_metrics TO `data-consumers`;

Drop Metric View

DROP VIEW IF EXISTS catalog.schema.orders_metrics;

CLI Execution

# Execute SQL via CLI
databricks experimental aitools tools query --warehouse WAREHOUSE_ID "
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW catalog.schema.orders_metrics
WITH METRICS
LANGUAGE YAML
AS \$\$
  version: 1.1
  source: catalog.schema.orders
  dimensions:
    - name: Order Month
      expr: DATE_TRUNC('MONTH', order_date)
  measures:
    - name: Total Revenue
      expr: SUM(total_price)
\$\$
"

Avoiding heredoc escaping: the \$\$ token-quoting above is fragile (it interacts with bash variable expansion, sed, and JSON encoding). For long DDL, prefer the Statement Execution API which takes the SQL as a JSON string:

databricks api post /api/2.0/sql/statements --json '{
  "warehouse_id": "WAREHOUSE_ID",
  "statement": "CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW catalog.schema.orders_metrics WITH METRICS LANGUAGE YAML AS $$\nversion: 1.1\nsource: catalog.schema.orders\ndimensions:\n  - name: Order Month\n    expr: DATE_TRUNC(MONTH, order_date)\nmeasures:\n  - name: Total Revenue\n    expr: SUM(total_price)\n$$"
}'

JSON-escaped strings are easier to template programmatically than shell heredocs.

Convert an Existing View to a Metric View

To migrate a regular view to a metric view, treat its SELECT source as the metric view’s source, then promote GROUP BY columns to dimensions and aggregations to measures. The new metric view does not replace the original — it sits alongside it as a governed metric layer.

-- Existing regular view (keep as-is or drop later)
-- CREATE VIEW catalog.schema.orders_summary AS
-- SELECT DATE_TRUNC('MONTH', order_date) AS month,
--        SUM(total_price) AS revenue,
--        COUNT(*) AS order_count
-- FROM catalog.schema.orders
-- GROUP BY 1;

-- Equivalent metric view (new artifact, governed)
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW catalog.schema.orders_metrics
WITH METRICS
LANGUAGE YAML
AS $$
  version: 1.1
  source: catalog.schema.orders
  dimensions:
    - name: Order Month
      expr: DATE_TRUNC('MONTH', order_date)
  measures:
    - name: Revenue
      expr: SUM(total_price)
    - name: Order Count
      expr: COUNT(1)
$$

After verifying parity (SELECT ... FROM <orders_metrics> returns the same numbers as the original view), update downstream consumers and drop the original view.

YAML Spec Quick Reference

version: 1.1                    # Required: "1.1" for DBR 17.2+
source: catalog.schema.table    # Required: source table/view
comment: "Description"          # Optional: metric view description
filter: column > value          # Optional: global WHERE filter

dimensions:                     # Required: at least one
  - name: Display Name          # Backtick-quoted in queries
    expr: sql_expression        # Column ref or SQL transformation
    comment: "Description"      # Optional (v1.1+)

measures:                       # Required: at least one
  - name: Display Name          # Queried via MEASURE(`name`)
    expr: AGG_FUNC(column)      # Must be an aggregate expression
    comment: "Description"      # Optional (v1.1+)

joins:                          # Optional: star/snowflake schema
  - name: dim_table
    source: catalog.schema.dim_table
    on: source.fk = dim_table.pk

materialization:                # Optional (experimental)
  schedule: every 6 hours
  mode: relaxed

Key Concepts

Dimensions vs Measures

Why Metric Views vs Standard Views?

Common Issues

Integrations

Metric views work natively with:

• AI/BI Dashboards - Use as datasets for visualizations
• AI/BI Genie - Natural language querying of metrics
• Alerts - Set threshold-based alerts on measures
• SQL Editor - Direct SQL querying with MEASURE()
• Catalog Explorer UI - Visual creation and browsing

Resources

• Metric Views Documentation
• YAML Syntax Reference
• Joins
• Window Measures (Experimental)
• Materialization
• MEASURE() Function