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"Drill" Concepts in BI Tools

Aurélia MICALLEF avatar
Written by Aurélia MICALLEF
Updated over 3 months ago

In a Business Intelligence (BI) tool, "drill" refers to features that allow users to explore data more deeply from a visualization. It enables you to "zoom in" on the data to understand what's behind an aggregated view.


📋 1. View as Table

❓What is "View as Table"?
The "View as Table" function allows you to view the same data displayed in a chart, at the same level of aggregation, but in a table format.

💡Example:
If a pie chart shows a 25% / 75% distribution, the table view will show two rows: one for 25% and one for 75%.

✅ Key Point:
No additional exploration is done.

It is simply another way of displaying the same data.


🕵️ 2. Drill to Detail (Accessing Detailed Rows)

❓What is "Drill to Detail"?
The "Drill to Detail" feature gives access to the list of raw data rows used to calculate a metric or aggregation shown in a chart.

✅ Key Point:
Available in many BI tools depending on the type of chart.

Enables row-level analysis to understand how a metric is constructed.


🧭 3. Drill By (Navigating a Hierarchy)

❓What is "Drill By"?
The "Drill By" function allows navigation through a hierarchy of dimensions within a chart, progressively exploring deeper levels of detail.

💡Example:
A visualization presents data by country → you can "drill" to show regions, then departments, etc.

⚠️ Important:
This feature is often available in BI tools, but requires specific configuration (not enabled by default).


🧠 Summary of Differences

Function

Level of Aggregation

View Type

Configuration Required

View as Table

Same as chart

Table

None

Drill to Detail

Row by row

Raw data

Depends on the chart

Drill By

Hierarchical

Dimension navigation

Yes

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