Nope, those are the primary components of a semantic layer. Most other semantic layer products have three main components: input data sources -- typically SQL queries or table names, configuration -- the semantic layer describing all the things you mention above, relative to the input data sources, and the access layer -- usually a non-SQL API that consumers must use to consume data that has been modeled by the semantic layer. Check out the docs for Cube [1] for an example of this. Cube also has a SQL API, but it's not fully fleshed out yet.
What makes Malloy shine is that all 3 of these things are integrated in the same language, so users don't have to jump between different tools to model and explore their data. You can query/explore data in Malloy, iterate on functions to express your business logic, and immediately view the results. Doing this in something like Cube would require you to: (1) write SQL queries to prototype the function, (2) update the Cube configuration files with your changes, and (3) hit the REST API with a request to view results. In Malloy, it's all just writing and running Malloy queries.
Comments
Nope, those are the primary components of a semantic layer. Most other semantic layer products have three main components: input data sources -- typically SQL queries or table names, configuration -- the semantic layer describing all the things you mention above, relative to the input data sources, and the access layer -- usually a non-SQL API that consumers must use to consume data that has been modeled by the semantic layer. Check out the docs for Cube [1] for an example of this. Cube also has a SQL API, but it's not fully fleshed out yet.
What makes Malloy shine is that all 3 of these things are integrated in the same language, so users don't have to jump between different tools to model and explore their data. You can query/explore data in Malloy, iterate on functions to express your business logic, and immediately view the results. Doing this in something like Cube would require you to: (1) write SQL queries to prototype the function, (2) update the Cube configuration files with your changes, and (3) hit the REST API with a request to view results. In Malloy, it's all just writing and running Malloy queries.
[1]: https://cube.dev/docs/query-format