# Dimension tables: efficiently adding details of processes and flows¶

In the Quickstart tutorial we saw how to draw some simple Sankey diagrams and partition them in different ways, such as this:

But to do the grouping on the right-hand side we had to explicitly list which people were “Men” and which were “Women”, using a partition like this:

customers_by_gender = Partition.Simple('process', [
('Men', ['Fred', 'James']),
('Women', ['Susan', 'Mary']),
])


We can show this type of information more efficiently – and with less code – by using dimension tables.

## Dimension tables¶

The table we’ve seen before is a flow fact table – it lists basic information about each flow:

• source: where the flow comes from

• target: where the flow goes to

• type or material: what is flowing

• value: the size (in tonnes, GJ, £ etc) of the flow

An example of this type of table is shown at the top right of this diagram:

The dimension tables add extra information about the source/target and type of the flows (the diagram above also shows extra information about the time period the flow relates to, but we’re not worrying about time in this tutorial). For example, “farm2” has a location attribute set to “Cambridge”.

This tutorial will show how to use dimension tables in floweaver.

[1]:

# Load the same data used in the quickstart tutorial
import pandas as pd
flows

[1]:

source target type value
0 farm1 Mary apples 5
1 farm1 James apples 3
2 farm2 Fred apples 10
3 farm2 Fred bananas 10
4 farm2 Susan bananas 5
5 farm3 Susan apples 10
6 farm4 Susan bananas 1
7 farm5 Susan bananas 1
8 farm6 Susan bananas 1
[2]:

# Load another table giving extra information about the
# farms and customers. index_col says the first column
# can be used to lookup rows.
index_col=0)
processes

[2]:

type location organic sex
id
farm1 farm Barton yes NaN
farm2 farm Barton yes NaN
farm3 farm Ely no NaN
farm4 farm Ely yes NaN
farm5 farm Duxford no NaN
farm6 farm Milton yes NaN
Mary customer Cambridge NaN Women
James customer Milton NaN Men
Fred customer Cambridge NaN Women
Susan customer Cambridge NaN Men

Each id in this table matches a source or target in the flows table above. We can use this extra information to build the Sankey.

[3]:

# Setup
from floweaver import *

# Set the default size to fit the documentation better.
size = dict(width=570, height=300)


Because we now have two tables (before we only had one so didn’t have to worry) we must put them together into a Dataset:

[4]:

dataset = Dataset(flows, dim_process=processes)


Now we can use the type column in the process table to more easily pick out the relevant processes:

[5]:

nodes = {
'farms': ProcessGroup('type == "farm"'),
'customers': ProcessGroup('type == "customer"'),
}


Compare this to how the same thing was written in the Quickstart:

nodes = {
'farms': ProcessGroup(['farm1', 'farm2', 'farm3',
'farm4', 'farm5', 'farm6']),
'customers': ProcessGroup(['James', 'Mary', 'Fred', 'Susan']),
}


Because we already know from the process dimension table that James, Mary, Fred and Susan are “customers”, we don’t have to list them all by name in the ProcessGroup definition – we can write the query type == "customer" instead.

Note

See the API Documentation for floweaver.ProcessGroup for more details.

The rest of the Sankey diagram definition is the same as before:

[6]:

ordering = [
['farms'],       # put "farms" on the left...
['customers'],   # ... and "customers" on the right.
]
bundles = [
Bundle('farms', 'customers'),
]
sdd = SankeyDefinition(nodes, bundles, ordering)
weave(sdd, dataset).to_widget(**size)


Again, we need to set the partition on the ProcessGroups to see something interesting. Here again, we can use the process dimension table to make this easier:

[7]:

# Create a Partition which splits based on the sex column
# of the dimension table
customers_by_gender = Partition.Simple('process.sex',
['Men', 'Women'])

nodes['customers'].partition = customers_by_gender
weave(sdd, dataset).to_widget(**size)


For reference, this is what we wrote before in the Quickstart:

customers_by_gender = Partition.Simple('process', [
('Men', ['Fred', 'James']),
('Women', ['Susan', 'Mary']),
])


And we can use other columns of the dimension table to set other partitions:

[8]:

farms_by_organic = Partition.Simple('process.organic', ['yes', 'no'])

nodes['farms'].partition = farms_by_organic
weave(sdd, dataset).to_widget(**size)


Finally, a tip for doing quick exploration of the data with partitions: you can automatically get a Partition which includes all the values that actually occur in your dataset using the dataset.partition method:

[9]:

# This is the logical thing to write but
# it doesn't actually work at the moment :(
# nodes['farms'].partition = dataset.partition('process.organic')

# It works with 'source.organic'... we can explain later
nodes['farms'].partition = dataset.partition('source.organic')

# This should be the same as before
weave(sdd, dataset).to_widget(**size)


## Summary¶

The process dimension table adds extra information about each process. You can use this extra information to:

1. Pick out the processes you want to include in a ProcessGroup (selection); and

2. Split apart groups of processes based on different attributes (partitions).

Things to try:

• Make a diagram showing the locations of farms on the left and the locations of customers on the right

[ ]: