Elixir Dashboard Designer provides different kinds of content from which you can compose your views. Every content must have a unique name within the Perspective so that it can be referenced. Each kind of content reads data and renders it into a view. The views then provide the ability to interact with the content.

Most kinds of content read from a datasource. There are two kinds of datasource available, the .ds files in the repository (which can be JDBC, XML, etc.) and dynamic datasources where the data records are extracted from other views. The first kind of datasource will be identified with a repository: URL, whereas the dynamic data will be accessed with a view: URL. When the datasource is defined in the repository, a schema is associated with it and is available to the content designer. When the datasource is defined by a view, there is no explicit schema available - it depends on the content of the view, which can itself be dynamic. The solution is to allow view-based datasources to explicitly load a schema. When a datasource has been chosen for a content, the subsequent page in the wizard will show the schema of that datasource if one is available. If no schema is available, the Load Schema button will be available to allow one to be explicitly loaded.

The data schema needs to be available in order to support options like filtering. Each content that reads from a datasource is allowed to filter the records before rendering them. The filtering options allow records to be selected based on criteria such as "Equals","Greater Than","In Range","In DataSet" etc. These are discussed in the Filter Processor description of the Elixir Data Designer manual.

In addition, slice: URL1&URL2&URL3 shows the intersection of selected records as the result. The syntax is a slice: prefix followed by view names separated by ampersands. All these named views must be grids from a common datasource. It can simplify the data operation by providing a workaround of filter.