TM1 Forum

Actually after simplicity in Cognos Planning I feel confused in working with dimensions in TM1

So I want to ask 3 questions which I can't have answers

1. I have a dimension with several elements. I want to rename one of them. How can I do it? I tried to go in Edit element structure - but only one thing which I found - it was changing element properties - but I couldn't change element's name

2. How I can copy dimension? Only way I found it was copying all elements from dimension to new dimension - but I can't copy attributes by this way

3. I found Export Dimension but I can't import it. What I should do to import all elements from that format (s (n), elements, attributes) in TI?

It seems Tm1 really unfriendly to developers (compare with Planning)

EP_explorer wrote:Actually after simplicity in Cognos Planning I feel confused in working with dimensions in TM1

So I want to ask 3 questions which I can't have answers

1. I have a dimension with several elements. I want to rename one of them. How can I do it? I tried to go in Edit element structure - but only one thing which I found - it was changing element properties - but I couldn't change element's name

2. How I can copy dimension? Only way I found it was copying all elements from dimension to new dimension - but I can't copy attributes by this way

3. I found Export Dimension but I can't import it. What I should do to import all elements from that format (s (n), elements, attributes) in TI?

It seems Tm1 really unfriendly to developers (compare with Planning)

1. You can't. In TM1 you can only delete or create new element.
2. Only with TI process
3. In any way

I work with planning six years and I can tell that me at first too wasn't habitual with TM1, but have very quickly got used and is worked perfectly

Hi,

As already stated there is no way to rename elements. There is a write up on the forum of a TI command to swap the element name and an alias around (SwapPrincipalAlias ?) but I seem to remember a few comments about it being a bit dangerous/

You can also use the Excel worksheet formula DBSA to send the attribute values to the new dimension, though you would need to recreate the atrributes themselves.

The format of dimension you get from dimension export gives you a dimension worksheet, this can be saved using the excel menu option TM1, Dimension, Save (I think).

I've not used planning so won't comment on the differences in the two products.

Cheers,

Steve Rowe wrote:Hi,

As already stated there is no way to rename elements. There is a write up on the forum of a TI command to swap the element name and an alias around (SwapPrincipalAlias ?) but I seem to remember a few comments about it being a bit dangerous/

SwapPrincipalAlias changes only visible name, but if you try enter element with name that was before, system give you an error that name is already present

An easy way to copy a dimension is to right click on the dimension in Server Explorer and choose Edit Dimension. Then choose Save As and give it a new name. Of course, this just copies the dimension, not attributes. You would still have to add the attributes manually or via a TI process.

In Cognos Planning, you can do many cube operations easily by using your mouse, however the similar things, in most cases, cannot be done using a mouse in TM1, but can be done using a keyboard through some TI scripting. Therefore Cognos Planning is a more user friendly tool especially for developers coming from non-programming background, while programmers can enjoy more with TM1.

In Cognos Planning, you have a concept of IID for each item (element) in your dimensions. This enables data being recorded against the IID in a cube, and therefore you can freely keep changing item names, as if they are aliases for the corresponding data in the cubes for each IID of the dimension.

However there is no concept of IID in TM1. The element principal names are considered as if they are IIDs. Therefore when you save data to a cube in TM1, the data is recorded against the element principal name. Therefore TM1 assumes that element principal names do not change.

On the other hand, you can use SwapAliasWithPrincipalName to swap element principal names with a selected alias. However, if you delete the resulting alias (which was element principal name before), then any existing data in the cube for an element that does not have any more corresponding principal element or or alias, would be lost. Therefore if you do not currenly have leaf level data against the element that you want to rename or if you want to rename elements in consolidated levels, you can conveniently use SwapAliasWithPrincipalName to rename the element principal name. If you want to rename a leaf level element that holds data in some cubes, then if you use SwapAliasWithPrincipalName, after the dimension operation, you should reload the corresponding data for the element that you renamed. However if you keep the old name as the alias, then you may not need to reload data as you will not loose it, altough this would not be a good practice I guess.

Elements can be renamed in TM1.

1. Create a new alias of the dimension. ie 'NewAlias' (The default names for this new alias will be the same name as the element name.)

2. Edit the alias names for the elements you wish to rename.

3. User the code SwapAliasWithPrincipalName(Dimension,'NewAlias',0); in a TI process.