Criteria are a key feature of a standard selection rule. Criteria allow you define how a standard selection rule can be used to target subsets of records within your data warehouse or an auxiliary database.
By default, if a standard selection rule contains no criteria, when it is run it counts all records in the table and at the key level defined by its resolution level. For example, assume a rule’s resolution level is ‘Customer Resolution’, which defines that distinct Customer_Key values are to be counted in the Customer table. If an empty rule is run using Customer Resolution, all distinct Customer_Key values in Customer are counted.
By introducing criteria into the standard selection rule you start to limit the records to be counted when the rule is run. For example, adding a ‘Gender is female’ criterion to the previous example causes only female customers to be counted.
Criteria are based on attributes – in the previous example, ‘Gender’ is the attribute, and ‘Gender is female’ a criterion based on that attribute.