Questions on data loads from Excel files (pros and cons)

[jimicron]

Hi all,

In working with a coworker yesterday in the development of a new model, we had some questions.

If you are loading from Excel spreadsheets (or .csv's), do you accumulate your monthly data in one file? Or do you have like a "current" file and then a "historical" that has all the past data?

Are there advantages or disadvantages to either?

Do you zero out each time you run your processes? Or do you just load one month at a time?

I haven't really run across anything on this particular topic (and I've been doing quite a bit of looking around recently).

Or another thought - if you DO use one file with multiple months, do you only load one month by using a lookup of sorts? OR do you use a parameter? The cognos training doesn't get into parameters and in looking at the Bedrock examples that I just downloaded, parameters look pretty complex and you have to know code (I'm just a finance guy so the code is new territory for me).

Thanks a lot!

[jim wood]

Hi all,

In working with a coworker yesterday in the development of a new model, we had some questions.

If you are loading from Excel spreadsheets (or .csv's), do you accumulate your monthly data in one file? Or do you have like a "current" file and then a "historical" that has all the past data?

This can be a pain to maintain unless you do it in a database.

Are there advantages or disadvantages to either?

The subset of data that you have to clear is small.

Do you zero out each time you run your processes? Or do you just load one month at a time?

It depends. In a lot of cases the account structure changes each month so you have to complete a full reload each month.

I haven't really run across anything on this particular topic (and I've been doing quite a bit of looking around recently).

Or another thought - if you DO use one file with multiple months, do you only load one month by using a lookup of sorts? OR do you use a parameter? The cognos training doesn't get into parameters and in looking at the Bedrock examples that I just downloaded, parameters look pretty complex and you have to know code (I'm just a finance guy so the code is new territory for me).

Thanks a lot!

A couple of things:

1) You won't have seen very much about this as this is something discussed at the very early stage of TM1 projects and is more driven by the users / customer.

2) It sounds like you still have some gaps after the training. Have you walked through the processes in the sample cube set that comes with your install?

3) As for time in your files. It is like any other dimension. As long as the value for it is in the file TI will see it as a variable, so yes most of the time you have all periods in one file.

Jim.