Difference

The difference function calculates the difference between a measure based on one set of partitions and sorts, and a measure based on another.

The difference function is supported for use with analyses based on SPICE and direct query data sets.

Syntax

The brackets are required. To see which arguments are optional, see the following descriptions.

difference
    (
         measure 
         ,[ sortorder_field ASC_or_DESC, ... ]
         ,lookup_index,
         ,[ partition field, ... ] 
    )

Arguments

measure

An aggregated measure that you want to see the difference for.

sort order field

One or more measures and dimensions that you want to sort the data by, separated by commas. You can specify either ascending (ASC) or descending (DESC) sort order.

Each field in the list is enclosed in {} (curly braces), if it is more than one word. The entire list is enclosed in [ ] (square brackets).

lookup index

The lookup index can be positive or negative, indicating a following row in the sort (positive) or a previous row in the sort (negative). The lookup index can be 1–2,147,483,647. For the engines MySQL, MariaDB and Aurora MySQL-Compatible Edition, the lookup index is limited to just 1.

partition field

(Optional) One or more dimensions that you want to partition by, separated by commas.

Each field in the list is enclosed in {} (curly braces), if it is more than one word. The entire list is enclosed in [ ] (square brackets).

Example

The following example calculates the difference between of sum({Billed Amount}), sorted by Customer Region ascending, compared to the next row, and partitioned by Service Line.

difference(
     sum( {Billed Amount} ), 
     [{Customer Region} ASC],
     1,
     [{Service Line}]
)

The following example calculates the difference between Billed Amount compared to the next line, partitioned by ([{Customer Region}]). The fields in the table calculation are in the field wells of the visual.

difference(
     sum( {Billed Amount} ), 
     [{Customer Region} ASC],
     1
)

The red highlights show how each amount is added ( a + b = c ) to show the difference between amounts a and c.