or more abstraction layers implemented in hardware or software for example the data source 460 may be accessed by network 450 in sonic embodiments the data source 460 may be accessed via an abstraction layer such as a semantic layer a data source is an information resource data sources include sources of data that enable data storage and retrieval data sources may include databases such as relational transactional hierarchical multi dimensional e g olap object oriented databases and the like further data sources include tabular data e g spreadsheets delimited text files data tagged with a markup language e g xml data transactional data unstructured data e g text files screen scrapings hierarchical data e g data in a file system xml data tiles a plurality of reports and any other data source accessible through an established protocol such as open database connectivity odbc produced by an underlying software system e g erp system and the like data sources may also include a data source where the data is not tangibly stored or otherwise ephemeral such as data streams broadcast data and the like these data sources can include associated data foundations semantic layers management systems security systems and so on in the above description numerous specific details are set forth to provide a thorough understanding of embodiments one skilled in the relevant art will recognize however that the embodiments can be practiced without one or more of the specific details or with other methods components techniques etc in other instances well known operations or structures are not shown or described in details although the processes illustrated and described herein include series of steps it will be appreciated that the different embodiments are not limited by the.