TM1 Forum

Hi all!

I have a really strange issue. First of all, I'm not the original developer of the current system.
In Cost Element dimension I have one consolidated element ("Total Sal&Ben&Labor&AL&TOIL") which is fully "non-working", I cannot find it using a wildcard search, DIMIX, ELLEV return 0 for that element.
The next MDX returns its children instead of the element itself:
[Cost Element].[Total Sal&Ben&Labor&AL&TOIL]

I even do not see it when I click "subset all" button in a subset editor. I even don't get it when I just loop all the dimension elements and output to a text file.
DIMSIZ function returns 1815, when I see in subset editor that element has index 1829

The only way how I select that element in subset is just by copying its name to a clipboard and pasting it in a subset editor.
As I said before If I try to use that element in TI I get an error that element doesn't exist.
I'm able to see the data in a cube viewer for that element but I cannot export it.

I have a process which generates DimensionElementInsert statements. So I created a process which for Cost Element first deletes all the elements and then runs those DimensionElementInsert to insert the elements back.
But after I run it, the element-ghost is still there.

Has anybody had anything similar? What did you do?

That element is even deathless. Copied the dimension to a test environment. Run DimensionDeleteAllELements. All elements deleted... except the "Element-ghost"

After deleting all the subsets of that dim, Element-ghost disappeared

vovanenok wrote:After deleting all the subsets of that dim, Element-ghost disappeared

That's because your mystery element was not a "ghost" of an element it was a subset.

Exactly what subsets are and how they are defined technically in TM1 is a little tricky (and not at all documented so your confusion is forgiven.) Subsets are more than just lists of elements, subsets also exist as "pseudo elements" in that 1/ if a subset name is used as an argument to a DBRW then the sum of all the elements in the subset is returned, this is useful as subsets can be used as custom consolidations and user-defined consolidations. 2/ If a subset name is passed as the element argument into DIMIX then an index is returned greater than the DIMSIZ of the dimension. 3/ and lease surprisingly if {[dimension].[subset]} is used in an MDX set expression then the list of elements in the subset it returned.

If a subset name is the same as an element name then the element takes priority, but still it is always better to ensure that subsets don't share a name with any elements to save extra confusion.

But now you know

Hi lotsaram
Thanks for such comprehensive reply. I knew about selecting elements from another subset using {[dimension].[subset]} but everything else was quite new and very useful

lotsaram wrote:Exactly what subsets are and how they are defined technically in TM1 is a little tricky (and not at all documented so your confusion is forgiven.)

Indeed. I don't know how frequently this comes up but it's more than a one off. This is as good an explanation as I've ever seen of it so it's been added to the FAQ thread.

Thanks for the explanation , however, I could verify on point 1 and 3 but not the second point . E.g. DIMIX ( 'Year' , 'Default' ) would still give 0 . Could you elaborate more in that scenario ? I am using 10.2.2 for testing. Thanks in advance

lotsaram wrote:

vovanenok wrote:After deleting all the subsets of that dim, Element-ghost disappeared

That's because your mystery element was not a "ghost" of an element it was a subset.

2/ If a subset name is passed as the element argument into DIMIX then an index is returned greater than the DIMSIZ of the dimension.

hyunjia wrote:Thanks for the explanation , however, I could verify on point 1 and 3 but not the second point . E.g. DIMIX ( 'Year' , 'Default' ) would still give 0 . Could you elaborate more in that scenario ? I am using 10.2.2 for testing. Thanks in advance

Yes, that's true, if you are using it in any function, it behaves like that element doesn't exist, i.e. DIMIX returns "0". But if you insert that element in a subset editor, it will show the index greater than dimension elements number

I get what you mean now , this is really handy feature really . I can't understand why the document doesn't empathize on that

lotsaram wrote:... if {[dimension].[subset]} is used in an MDX set expression then the list of elements in the subset it returned.

You can use TM1SubsetToSet to code around the ambiguity generated by this idiosyncrasy, e.g.: