TIME Dimension types

[George Regateiro]

We have been starting to use Performance Modeler and some of the new features around metrics in 10.2. We have hit some questions around the dimension type TIME that can be created. I preface these questions around the starting point of we do not have extensive experience in the OLAP space outside of TM1 so some of the questions might seem obvious to some of you. We started out by using the option to convert an existing dimension to a time dimension through performance modeler.

1) It looks like all the conversion process did was add in some new attributes to the dim. Is there anything else in the background that the conversion does?

2) Do I actually have to fill in the new attributes? We had similar ones created already so I would like to not duplicate them. Will these cause any issues with the metrics part if these are not filled in?

3) Outside of the requirement for Performance Modeler Scorecarding to have a TIME dimension specified are there any benefits to having a time dimension over a plain TM1 dimension that was used as a time dimension.

[jim wood]

1) It looks like all the conversion process did was add in some new attributes to the dim. Is there anything else in the background that the conversion does?

No it doesn't. Basically nothing has changed under the hud. PM uses a mixture of additional processes and attribute cubes to carry out what you do in PM. The perfect example is adding a dimension to a cube. All it does is use a process to export data, destroy the cube, rebuild the cube and reload the data.

2) Do I actually have to fill in the new attributes? We had similar ones created already so I would like to not duplicate them. Will these cause any issues with the metrics part if these are not filled in?

I depends on what calculations you put on the time dimension.

3) Outside of the requirement for Performance Modeler Scorecarding to have a TIME dimension specified are there any benefits to having a time dimension over a plain TM1 dimension that was used as a time dimension.

Not as far as I have seen. Keep in mind that PM has been created for people migrating over from Ent Planning. While I like some of the things they have done in PM, for me they are just plastering over cracks until they change the server architecture to incorporate a lot of this where it needs to be. I doubt however that this won't happen soon if at all.

I hope that helps,

Jim.