A summary is similar to a list, however the rows are the data types (rather than the objects) and the columns are aggregated values of all children of that subject type. Unlike a list, a summary field is compulsory, as the individual objects are not presented in the view. The summary view type is probably the least commonly used, but it is useful when you simply care about the end result and not the detail of how it was calculated.

The following example shows Datastore Space Usage from the cluster level; information such as the average used GB across each Datastore can be displayed without the need to show each Datastore present in a list:

Although it will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter, the availability of creating simple summary views of child resources has partially removed the need for creating super metrics for simply rolling up data to parent objects.