Building the Essbase Outline [ 90 ] In our example, we choose a Microsoft Excel le as our data source. 1. Click on the Open data le option 2. Select the le system and browse to the le (for example: c:\data\market .xls ) and the data in the excel le is as shown in the following screenshot: 3. Select the above excel le and click on OK. You will see the Data Prep Editor 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 [ 91 ] In this screenshot, the upper screen frame shows the data source le in its original form. The lower screen frame shows how Essbase will interpret the data before it gets loaded into your Essbase database. In the example above, we discussed updating the outline from the input data source le. In the next chapter, we will talk about how to import data using the second method which is directly loaded from the RDBMS SQL Data Source. Step 4: Set the Data Source Properties While plenty of your data will be entered manually from user interaction, a good deal of it will likely come from external systems. Before Essbase can process any data le, we need to dene the data to Essbase in the rules le. Is the data in a comma separated le or tab delimited le? For some feeds, we need to ignore the header records which are usually the rst row in the input le. These settings can be set in the Data Source Properties. Delimiter: Data delimiters are used to separate individual elds in the data source. The types of delimiters available in Essbase are given as follows: • Comma: This is for a comma separated data source le. • Tab: This is for a tab delimited data source le. • All spaces: The elds will be delimited by empty white spaces. • Custom: The common delimiter which is agreed with the source systems. For example, colon (:) or any other single character. • Column width: The data columns have specic widths. For example, the rules le will separate the data into columns based on all columns being ten characters in width. To open an input data source le in EAS, with the Data Prep Editor open: 1. Click on Options, and then click on the Data Source Properties. 2. The rst tab is the Delimiter tab 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 Building the Essbase Outline [ 92 ] 3. Select or create the appropriate data delimiter. The appropriate delimiter is the character or set of characters that are used to separate the columns of your data. Essbase offers you a few of the most common delimiters and gives you the option of setting your own delimiters based on what is being used in your data le. Step 5: Set the View to Dimension build elds In this step, we need to dene if this rule is used for Dimension build elds view or Data load elds view. By default, Data load eld view is selected. • Dimension build eld: You will select this option when you are using the rules le with your data le to add new members to the outline or to update existing members in the outline. • Data load eld: This option is for loading data with a data load rules le and will be discussed in more detail later. To set the Dimension build elds view in EAS, with the Data Prep Editor open: • Click on View and then select the checkbox Dimension build elds as we are currently doing a dimension build. We will talk in-depth about the Data load elds view in the next chapter. 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 [ 93 ] Step 6: Select Dimension build method Build dimensions methods are basically used for adding, removing, or updating a member, an alias, or a property of an Essbase outline member. These are dened in the build rule les. There are three ways you can build an Essbase outline: • Generation reference • Level reference • Parent-child reference Let us talk about how each method can be used to update the Essbase outline. Generation reference With the generation reference set, the data source should be arranged or organized from top to bottom as it pertains to the database outline structure. We consider the dimension name itself as Generation 1. Each record in the rules le contains the parent name as Generation 1, the child names are Generation 2, children of the child name are Generation 3, children of that child name are Generation 4, and so on. For example: Year | Quarter | Month. 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 [ 94 ] Level reference With the level reference set, the data source should be arranged or organized from the leaf node or bottom level to the top level or the dimension name. We consider the leaf node to be Level 0, the next record is called Level 1, the next record is Level 2, and so on, until we reach the top dimension level. For example: Month | Quarter | Year. Parent-child reference In the parent-child reference, the parent is followed by the child. Each record will have a parent and then its child. For example, the YEAR member is the parent and the QUARTER member is the child. The QUARTER level is also a parent since its child members are the months. For this example, we have used the generation reference. GEOGRAPHIC REGION REGION ALIAS HUB CITY CITY ALIAS DEALER NAME DEALER ALIAS NorthAmerica NorthAmerica NorthAmerica NorthAmerica NorthAmerica NorthAmerica NorthAmerica NorthAmerica NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Central Chicago Chicago Chicago Chicago Detroit Detroit Detroit Detroit Motor City EssCar Motown EssCar Phord City EssCar East Side EssCar Midwest EssCar Soldier Field EssCar Capone EssCar St. Valentines EssCar 12045 12046 12047 12084 17801 17802 17803 17804 DTW DTW DTW DTW ORD ORD ORD ORD As shown in the gure above, we can see two things: • First, we see that the rst record in the data le is a header record, which usually describes something about the data le itself such as the column names. This can be skipped by setting 1 in the Number of lines to skip in the Header section of the Data Source Properties as shown in the screenshot. Then click on OK. 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 . 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 [ 92 ] 3. Select or create the appropriate data delimiter 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 [ 94 ] Level reference With the level reference set,. licensed for the sole use by Paul Corcorran on 5th July 20 09 8601 ave. p #1, , lubbock, , 794 23 Download at Boykma.Com Chapter 3 [ 93 ] Step 6: Select Dimension build method Build dimensions