Extensible Analytics Engine (XAE) - FAQ

What is the Extensible Analytics Engine?

The Extensible Analytics Engine (XAE) is GoodData’s computational engine that further advances reporting capabilities. XAE introduces a number of new features in addition to query performance optimizations. Now users can carry out more complex queries in even less time.

How can I ensure my GoodData workspaces are running on XAE?

As part of a long-term effort to seamlessly introduce XAE to all of our customers, we migrated all workspaces to XAE in small batches – all while performing large-scale compatibility testing to avoid service interruptions.

What new features have been introduced with XAE?

With the introduction of XAE comes a number of new highly-requested features, which can be leveraged by adding any of our newly supported MAQL expressions to a metric’s definition. New features include exception reporting (NULL handling), conditional reporting (IF THEN ELSE and CASE expressions), advanced ranking (including percentage ranking and ranking within groups), date attribute arithmetics, and new running total functions.

How do I create a new workspace on XAE?

All new workspaces are set to run on XAE by default.

Do I need to modify any of my current metrics?

No, existing metric definitions are fully compatible with the new query engine! XAE brings extended functionality through new MAQL expressions, which may be added to existing metrics’ definitions, but no action is required of the user to continue using existing metrics.