Oracle Essbase 9 Implementation Guide- P32 ppsx

Header DefinitionAs mentioned earlier, Essbase requires a representative of all of the dimensions in the database outline to be included in the data you are attempting to load.. While cr

Header Definition

As mentioned earlier, Essbase requires a representative of all of the dimensions

in the database outline to be included in the data you are attempting to load

Obviously, this is not always possible or even practical Never fear, the Essbase

data load rules file once again has turned this potential issue into a non-issue!

While creating the data load rules file, one of the first things you do is map the different fields in the data to the appropriate dimensions the data will load to If even one of the dimensions is missing, you will get an error when you try to validate the Essbase data

load rules file This is where the Header Definition function comes into play.

For example, the monthly file you receive from the marketing department contains

sales information for the company The data values are always in U.S dollars, but

there is no column or field in the data that specifically says US DOLLAR like you

have defined in the database outline All you need to do is quickly and easily add

the US DOLLAR member in the Header Definition and Essbase will load data as

if every record in the file contains US DOLLAR data values

To set the Header Definitions:

1 In EAS, open the Data Prep Editor

2 Click on Options | Data Load Setting.

3 Specify US Dollar in the Header Definition tab as shown here:

Step 8: Associating fields with Data Load

Properties

In order to correctly load the data into the Essbase cube, we need to map each field

in the data, using the data load rules file, to their specific database outline

dimensions This way, while Essbase is loading the data into the database, the data

fields are correctly aligned to the right members in the database outline Essbase

will only use the fields you have mapped in your data load rules file If the data file contains more fields than necessary, Essbase can simply ignore them if you have

them tagged as Ignore.

This is the key step while setting up the data load rules file

To open the Data Field Properties:

1 In EAS, open the Data Prep Editor.

2 Click on Fields | Properties.

3 As shown below, Data Field Properties option has three tabs: Global

Properties, Data Load Properties, and Dimension Build Properties.

Let us talk about the Global Properties and Data Load Properties as Dimension

Build Properties were already covered in an earlier chapter

Global properties

As the term global applies to everything, in this context, global means both

the Dimension Build Properties and Data Load Properties

These are the settings that can be used in the Global Properties tab:

1 Case: There are three types of Case present: Original, Lowercase, and

UpperCase While updating the dimensions, you sometimes want all

of the members to be upper case or lower case, or it can be left as originally

sent in the data file Original is selected by default This is particularly

important when you are working with Essbase installed on a Unix platform

as it is case sensitive by default

2 Prefix or Suffix: This is to add a prefix or suffix to the member so that

the member name is unique You can add your own prefix or suffix

3 Drop leading/trailing spaces: This is used to trim the member before it

gets loaded into database outline This is selected by default

4 Convert spaces to underscores: In the earlier versions of Essbase, spaces

were not allowed Therefore, this property was used to convert spaces to

underscores This is no longer a problem in newer versions of Essbase, but

this property setting is carried over to allow upgraded systems to continue

operation without major rework

Data Load Properties

In the previous section, you learned how to set the global properties for your data

load or dimension build In this section, you will learn how to add only the data load field properties Each field in the rule file can be an outline member, data member, or

data that can be ignored In the Data Load Properties, we will define each field and

how it is related to the Essbase outline

The settings that can be set in the Data Load Properties tab are as follows:

1 Field name: This is where you map your data element to the outline member You are currently seeing MARKET_ID, which is the column name in the

relational database where our data is coming from The outline member

name is different from this column name so you need to select the field name, clear the information that already exists, and then double-click on the correct

outline dimension You should then see the member name in the Field name

(wrapped with double quotes if you have space in the member name) If

you do not see the outline and its members, click on the Outline… button

to associate this rule to the correct Essbase database Click the OK button to complete this, or click the Next button to go to the next field.

2 Data field: The Data field can be defined in two ways, one is by defining

the field name like in step 1 If all of the data you are loading is for the

same value, Sales, then you can label this column as Sales If this data value column will represent values for more than one member, that is Sales and

Stocks, and the data source contains another column that identifies the data member, then the data values column can be named only Data

As shown in the following screenshot, on field 7 we have defined the

Account dimension name, Total Revenue, and on field 8 we have defined

it as simply Data:

3 Ignore field during data load: For any fields that are not required to

successfully load the data from the file you have received, all you need

to do is check the Ignore field during data load option in the Data Load

Properties tab.

4 Scale: Depending on the size of your company or the size of the egos of the

company executives, you may find yourself gathering data that has been

scaled to varying degrees Because of this, Essbase offers you the option to

scale your data as you load it Typically, a busy executive may feel that the

number 10,500,000 is too large and bothersome to look at So, he will ask

that his report have the data values scaled into the thousands (1/1000th)

This would give the report the presentation value of 10,500 which would

represent 10,500,000 To do this, select the Scale option and enter the

appropriate scaling value you wish to use on the data being loaded

(10, 100, 1,000, and so on)