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Meaningless intersections or how to relate select elements of 2 dimensions

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ibulatov

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Wednesday, February 2nd 2011, 10:30pm

Meaningless intersections or how to relate select elements of 2 dimensions

I have two dimensions (among others): cost items and divisions. Divisions come in two types (peripheral and central). Each division type has its own cost items, but certain cost items' names are shared (meaning that the same name of the cost item may be used in both division types, which doesn't mean that it's one and the same cost - it's the same cost name, but the data will be different).
So how do I structure the cube, so it never displays the data items that are meaningless to me, like a cost item that doesn't belong to a division type.

tish1

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Thursday, February 3rd 2011, 9:58am

Hi,

as a general rule:
two things that have the same meaning should not have the same name and
one thing should only have one distinct name

Regards.
Robert Tischler
Senior Consultant Vector SW DV GmbH

sivgin

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Thursday, February 3rd 2011, 10:01am

You do not have a lot of options structuring a cube. Think always of a star-schema. If you are having trouble understanding your elements in a dimension use alias function to give an element a meaningful name!

And I agree Tish post
sivgin

This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "sivgin" (Feb 3rd 2011, 10:02am)

ibulatov

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Thursday, February 3rd 2011, 11:44am

Thank you for you replies, but I am afraid I side-tracked you with my parenthesis statements. My question was not about naming things. To restate my question: each of the two division types has its own cost items (uniquely named this time). How do I arrange the dimensions or elements in them so that meaningless intersections either don't exist in the cube altogether or at least they are never displayed (so I don't get intersection of a cost item with a division type that doesn't belong to this division type)

James

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Thursday, February 3rd 2011, 12:23pm

You can't restrict the intersections on the server. In any cube, all intersections between all elements are valid and may contain values, either input or calculated.

Take a spreadsheet for example, all row / column intersections are valid and you may enter data or formulae into any cell.

So, you will need to restrict the intersections in the front end. A couple of ways that spring to mind:

1. Create attributes on elements on Costs Items that can be used to determine which items should be visible when divisions are selected.

2. (Probably better) Create a cube with two dimensions, Cost Items and Divisions. Enter a value of 1 to indicate a valid combination. An advantage of this approach is you can add a time dimension to cope with changing relationships between cost items and divisions.

ibulatov

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Thursday, February 3rd 2011, 2:02pm

James, thank a lot for advice. But if I created a second cube, how does the first (main) cube know that there is a second cube that defines some relations? Won't I need to relate these two cubes somehow?

And where exactly should I add 1 or 0?

This post has been edited 1 times, last edit by "ibulatov" (Feb 3rd 2011, 2:05pm)

garyrivas

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Monday, April 11th 2011, 7:25pm

use attribute

I think the best solution is use attribute "Cost" for both dimensions.
Ing. Gary Rivas
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