Chapter 3 [ 75 ] As you can see in the preceding screenshot, most of your data will have Calendar Periods associated with it, so it would most likely be tagged as a Dense dimension. The Vehicles dimension would more than likely be tagged as Sparse. You may want to tag the Vehicles dimension as Sparse because while you have vehicles for sale in all markets and probably have vehicle sales for all calendar periods, you will not have all vehicle models for sale in all markets. You may also not have sales for all vehicle models in all calendar periods. For example, not all of Esscar's vehicles sell in all markets listed in the outline. The data is sparsely distributed across the data blocks. On the other hand, all of the data in your database ties to the Scenario dimension, so that data is densely populated across data blocks. You would set the Market dimension to Sparse and the Scenario dimension to Dense. Build your rst outline That's it! Your brain is just chocked full of Essbase database outline knowledge. Let's build an Essbase database outline using the EAS. Within EAS, perform the following tasks: Double–click, to expand in the EAS, on ESSBASE Severs then Applications then ESSCAR (Application) then ESSCAR (database) and nally Outline. The ESSCAR database outline is opened in the Essbase Outline Editor as shown in screenshot below. Remember, as we said before, this is basically a placeholder outline created for you by Essbase when you created the new database. Your job is to now build this outline into a fully functioning Essbase database outline that will support a real database. This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Paul Corcorran on 5th July 2009 8601 ave. p #1, , lubbock, , 79423 Download at Boykma.Com Building the Essbase Outline [ 76 ] The steps to add dimensions and members to an Essbase database outline are: 1. Begin by right-clicking on Outline, and then click on Add Child. 2. Enter CALENDAR PERIODS to name this new member and create your rst Essbase database dimension. Remember, any child member that is added to the main outline is considered a data dimension in the Essbase outline. When you right-click on the data dimension, you will see an entirely new set of options. If your preference is to left-click (right and left mouse click, assumes right-handed mouse operation) you will activate an assortment of Easy Access Menu buttons where you can choose the types of dimensions as shown in the following screenshot: This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Paul Corcorran on 5th July 2009 8601 ave. p #1, , lubbock, , 79423 Download at Boykma.Com Chapter 3 [ 77 ] Since CALENDAR PERIODS is supposed to be our time dimension, we will tag this dimension as the Time dimension type. Right-click on the CALENDAR PERIODS, click on Add Children, and enter Year 2009. To add another year, right-click on Year 2009, click on Add Sibling, and enter Year 2008 and so on. Keep going until you add year members to Year 2006. Following this same procedure, you can right-click on the year members you have just added and now add quarter periods as children to them. Once you have the quarter periods added (use the screenshot below as a guide) you will then add the month members to the quarters. While this may seem to be an inefcient and tedious task, it is necessary that you learn to be comfortable with manually editing an Essbase database outline. Never fear! Editing a database outline manually is not the only way to update it. Shortly, we will explain the use of data Load Rules that can be used to load data into the database and automatically update the outline. These automated processes can be used for a variety of tasks from adding new members to the outline to performing database maintenance. This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Paul Corcorran on 5th July 2009 8601 ave. p #1, , lubbock, , 79423 Download at Boykma.Com Building the Essbase Outline [ 78 ] Member properties Member properties are characteristics, set by you, that determine the behavior of the data stored in your database. For example, it is quite natural to want to know the value of sales for a quarter. If you set the consolidation property of each month member to (+) and calculate the database, the calendar quarter value will be the sum of the three child members under it which are the individual months. There is no need to load data at the calendar quarter's level since you can calculate it from the individual month's level. There are also storage properties that Essbase uses to determine how the data is stored in the database. The following is a detailed explanation of member properties and their uses. Member consolidations When you dene a new child member of a dimension, you need to tag that member with a consolidation operator. A consolidation operator will tell Essbase how this member will be calculated along with its sibling member(s) upto the parent member. Get familiar with the term rolled up because you will hear that term a lot when discussing how you are calculating your data. The term rolled up means summing children members to a parent member. When you sum the months of a quarter member, you are rolling up the months. Think of rolling up the same as adding up. The default property setting is the addition (+) operator. Very important! Depending on the dimension selected and the method of calculation, Essbase will either perform a top-down or a bottom-up calculation. What this means is that when setting up your database outline, the physical placement of members can be equally as important as the property settings. This will be explained in more detail later in this section. Looking at the Calendar Periods dimension, the path of calculation for Quarter 1 would be January then February, if (+) is selected as the operator for February, add February to January then look at March, again if March is tagged with the (+) operator, then add March to February which is already the total of January and February. This is rolling up the data! Valid consolidation operators The proper setting of the database member consolidation operators is critical to the correct calculation of your data. A complete list of the available member consolidation operators with a brief explanation of their function is listed as follows: This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Paul Corcorran on 5th July 2009 8601 ave. p #1, , lubbock, , 79423 Download at Boykma.Com Chapter 3 [ 79 ] • Addition (+)—adds this member to the result of the previously calculated sibling member calculation • Subtraction (-)—multiplies the member by (-1) then adds the product to the result of the previously calculated member. • Multiplication (*)—multiplies this member by the result of the previously calculated member • Division (/)—divides the result of the previously calculated member by this member • Percent (%)—divides the previously calculated member result by this member and multiples it by 100 • Exclude from consolidation (~)—do not consolidate (ignore) this member • Never consolidate (^)—do not use this member in any consolidation in any dimension This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Paul Corcorran on 5th July 2009 8601 ave. p #1, , lubbock, , 79423 Download at Boykma.Com . full of Essbase database outline knowledge. Let's build an Essbase database outline using the EAS. Within EAS, perform the following tasks: Double–click, to expand in the EAS, on ESSBASE. functioning Essbase database outline that will support a real database. This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Paul Corcorran on 5th July 20 09 8601 ave. p #1, , lubbock, , 794 23 Download. licensed for the sole use by Paul Corcorran on 5th July 20 09 8601 ave. p #1, , lubbock, , 794 23 Download at Boykma.Com Building the Essbase Outline [ 78 ] Member properties Member properties