Semantic Entities

The Semantic Fusion™ Model is built around two primary types of semantic entities:

Concepts: Core business objects or entities (e.g., Customer, Product, Order)
Metrics: Quantifiable business measurements or KPIs (e.g., Revenue, Conversion Rate, Customer Lifetime Value)

Both entity types follow the same fundamental structure with base queries, attributes, dimensions, and relationships, but they serve different purposes in the semantic model and answer different types of business questions.#

Difference Between Concepts and Metrics

While concepts and metrics share the same structural components, they serve distinct purposes in the semantic model:

Concepts:

• Represent business entities or objects (things)
• Focus on characteristics, properties, and relationships
• Answer "what" and "who" questions
• Typically have one record per business entity instance

Metrics:

• Represent business measurements and KPIs (values)
• Focus on quantification, aggregation, and trends
• Answer "how much," "how many," and "how well" questions
• Typically aggregate data across multiple records

Understanding this fundamental difference helps when designing your semantic model and deciding whether a particular business entity should be implemented as a concept or a metric.