Feeding via Alias?
Posted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:06 pm
This one is going to take a little explaining, so please bear with me;
Examples in the attached excel file are fictitious to try and keep things simple. I have 2 cubes using similar but not the same breakdown of transport. Dim A is used in a high level cube in which people create a general plan of requirements by headcount. Dim B is more detailed and used in a different cube where each area plans their requirements to a much lower level in hours (converted by TI in to equivalent heads at a later stage).
The n levels in each dim are data entry points. There is a combination cube which uses the higher level Dim A to report data from both the high and low level cubes. It does this using a rule to pull in the data from each cube, and the low and high level cubes each have a feeder to this consolidation cube.
On Dim B, because the lowest level elements do not exist in dim A where it needs to feed to, an attribute exists to calculate the lowest parent that exists in both dims. It’s this attribute that is then used in the feeder to ensure the numbers appear in the consolidation cube correctly.
That’s the easy bit (honest!). The company being what it is cannot stick to a single naming convention or hierarchy for anything longer than 5 minutes. I wanted to recreate the structures of Dim A and Dim B in the new structures by using alias’s where the name of elements has been changed. I didn’t want to change the elements directly because then I loose any data I already have in cube A (high level one). This is where TM1 is failing me.
The rule that creates the attribute which is used in the feeder works fine with an alias. If “Planes†got an alias of “Aircraft†in both dims then the attribute picks that up no problem. What it refuses to do is feed with the alias name. The DB rule is using ! for most dims in the cube, and had it been TI the same kind of action with CellPutN would work fine with an alias. It simply will not work with the rules though, I get no numbers in the consolidation cube unless the element names match, and the alias isn’t good enough.
An example of the feeder from cube B is below;
If the element names are the same, this works no problem. But if one has been renamed via alias the feeder does not work and the numbers do not appear in cube C.
Should TM1 be able to feed via alias names (in the same way TI can load to alias names) in which case this seems to be a fault, or is feeding via aliases not supported?
Examples in the attached excel file are fictitious to try and keep things simple. I have 2 cubes using similar but not the same breakdown of transport. Dim A is used in a high level cube in which people create a general plan of requirements by headcount. Dim B is more detailed and used in a different cube where each area plans their requirements to a much lower level in hours (converted by TI in to equivalent heads at a later stage).
The n levels in each dim are data entry points. There is a combination cube which uses the higher level Dim A to report data from both the high and low level cubes. It does this using a rule to pull in the data from each cube, and the low and high level cubes each have a feeder to this consolidation cube.
On Dim B, because the lowest level elements do not exist in dim A where it needs to feed to, an attribute exists to calculate the lowest parent that exists in both dims. It’s this attribute that is then used in the feeder to ensure the numbers appear in the consolidation cube correctly.
That’s the easy bit (honest!). The company being what it is cannot stick to a single naming convention or hierarchy for anything longer than 5 minutes. I wanted to recreate the structures of Dim A and Dim B in the new structures by using alias’s where the name of elements has been changed. I didn’t want to change the elements directly because then I loose any data I already have in cube A (high level one). This is where TM1 is failing me.
The rule that creates the attribute which is used in the feeder works fine with an alias. If “Planes†got an alias of “Aircraft†in both dims then the attribute picks that up no problem. What it refuses to do is feed with the alias name. The DB rule is using ! for most dims in the cube, and had it been TI the same kind of action with CellPutN would work fine with an alias. It simply will not work with the rules though, I get no numbers in the consolidation cube unless the element names match, and the alias isn’t good enough.
An example of the feeder from cube B is below;
Code: Select all
# Feed Cube C
['Actual Headcount'] =>
DB('Cube C,'Actual Headcount',!Nomination,!Resource Source,
attrs('DIM B',!DIM B,'DIM A LOOKUP');Should TM1 be able to feed via alias names (in the same way TI can load to alias names) in which case this seems to be a fault, or is feeding via aliases not supported?
