Perspectives
Data cubes can be very complex objects to navigate in Team Foundation Server. A single cube represents the contents of an entire data warehouse, with multiple measure groups in a cube representing multiple fact tables and multiple dimensions based on multiple dimension tables. This can result in a very complex and powerful cube, but the prospect can be daunting if you often only need to interact with a small portion of a cube in order to satisfy your business intelligence and reporting requirements.
Because Team Foundation Server is based on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services, you can use a perspective to reduce the apparent complexity of a cube by defining viewable subsets of the cube that provide focused, business-specific or application-specific viewpoints on a cube. The perspective controls the visibility of objects contained by a cube, including measure groups, measures, dimensions, hierarchies, attributes, key performance indicators, actions, and calculations.
Note
In order to use perspectives with the Team Foundation cube, you must use Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition or SQL Server 2005 Enterprise (64) Edition on the data tier. SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition, which ships as part of Team Foundation Server, does not support the use of perspectives.
The perspectives described in this section are specifically defined over the Team Foundation cube to provide a targeted set of information and you should use them to answer most of your questions. However, if you are an advanced user of the cube and are comfortable with OLAP operations you can bypass the perspectives and query the Team System cube directly.
In This Section
- Build Perspective
Describes the Build perspective, which provides metrics regarding builds such as build time and build frequency and which can be analyzed by various dimensions such as who performed the build, the build type, the build flavor, the build outcome, and so forth.
- Code Churn Perspective
Describes the Code Churn perspective, which provides metrics about the number of file versions stored in Team Foundation source control. This perspective tracks the total number of lines of code and number of files, as well as how many lines of code were changed, added, or deleted. These totals can be analyzed by file directory, build, or the team member doing check-ins. All totals can be analyzed over time, so you can answer questions such as “How many lines of code in .cs files have changed between two builds?"
- Code Coverage Perspective
Describes the Code Coverage perspective, which provides metrics about how many lines and blocks of code were tested in various build and run configurations.
- Current Work Item Perspective
Describes the Current Work Item perspective, which provides metrics regarding the current state of work items. You can use this perspective to answer questions such as "How many active tasks are assigned to each person?"
- Load Test Perspective
Describes the Load Test perspective, which provides metrics regarding tests run under simulated load. This perspective enables counters gathered during the load test to be trended and analyzed over time.
- Test Results Perspective
Describes the Test Results perspective, which provides metrics about test runs and test results. Test results are tracked over time and can be analyzed by their outcome, which build they were testing, the type of test, and other dimensions.
- Work Item History Perspective
Describes the Work Items perspective, which provides metrics and detailed information about work items (for example, Bugs or Issues), including historical information that enables total work item counts to be analyzed over time or as of a current date. You can use this perspective to answer questions such as “How many active and resolved bugs were there on each day during an iteration?”