How to add string elements into consolidated elements in TI?

[phamtinkt88]

Hi all,

I'm trying to insert a string element into consolidated element using Turbo Integrator code as below:

• Step 1: DIMENSIONELEMENTINSERT('DimName','',Parents,'C');
  DIMENSIONELEMENTINSERT('DimName','',Child,'S');
  
  Step 2: DIMENSIONELEMENTCOMPONENTADD('DimName',Parents,Child,0);

Then error "Child is not numeric" occurs.

The only way i know so far is add child as numeric and then manually change it's type to string using properties in Dimension Editor

To my humble knowledge, there is no functions in TI for adding a string element into consolidated elements as a child. Is it true ?
Anyone knows how to add string element into consolidated element in TI, please help ?

Thanks a lot,
Tin Pham

[kangkc]

You will know the answer after you simulate this in Dimension Editor.

In short the answer is no and I do not see why you need to do that.

[phamtinkt88]

You will know the answer after you simulate this in Dimension Editor.

In short the answer is no and I do not see why you need to do that.

Hi kangkc,

Thanks for your reply !
I think this is a quite popular user's requirement. Gathering string elements into a consolidated is convenience to observe and manage for user.

[lotsaram]

I can see how it would be useful/intuitive for users to navigate measure dimensions that contain string elements where the string measures could be logically grouped together and groups could be expanded/collapsed, etc. However from a dimension and database structure POV strings don't consolidate so therefore they can't be added as a child in a consolidation.

Depending on what you are doing there are alternatives. Whether a cell is numeric or string is determined by the element type of the last dimension in the cube so you can just have a 2 member dimension as the last dimension of the cube with 2 elements Value (N) and Comment (S). Then for your real measures dimension you just group into rollups as you please.

There is a school of thought that strings and values shouldn't really be mixed within the same cube if you can possibly help it as this precludes being able to properly optimize dimension order (and therefore memory footprint and calculation/query performance). Another possibility is to segregate string comments to a separate cube that has the same dimensionality but just adding a dimension with a single string member. (This is effectively what 10.1.1 now does automatically in the background in contributor applications for "cell annotations" and it also add in clients dimension.)

[Andy Key]

...string elements ... can't be added as a child in a consolidation.

Not directly in a TI or through Dimension Editor, but as the OP says, you can add Simple elements as children (using either TI or DimEd) and then change their element type to String in Dimension Editor. Maintaining the dimension after that then becomes a nightmare as moving elements around will reset the strings to simple.

I had to do something similar not so long ago for a specific situation where string cubes wouldn't have been a viable option. Wouldn't do it again if I could help it...