9
Solving Data

Chapter summary

This chapter provides information about solve definitions and group solve definitions.

Who should read this chapter

You need to know the information in this chapter if you are one of the following:

• An administrator who creates and maintains solve definitions for personal use and for distribution to other users of the shared database that you administer

• A Budget workstation user who creates and maintains solve definitions for personal use and uses solve definitions that have been distributed to you by your administrator

• An Analyst workstation user who, although unable to create, modify, or run solve definitions, wishes to gain a basic understanding of solve definitions and their uses

List of topics

This chapter includes the following topics:

• About Solving Data

• Working with Solve Definitions

• Working with Group Solve Definitions

• Automatically Running Solves and Group Solves

About Solving Data

Definition: Solving data

When changes are made to Financial Analyzer data, the data must be solved to ensure that it is current. Solving data can accomplish the following:

• Calculate new data values for financial data items

• Aggregate values along any hierarchies that have been defined for the dimensions that make up the financial data item

Definition: Solve definition

A solve definition is an information set for calculating new data for a financial data item. The elements that can make up a solve definition are models, hierarchies, and financial data items.

You can use a solve definition to:

• Associate stored financial data items with sets of interrelated equations called models, for the purpose of calculating data

• Associate stored financial data items with dimensional hierarchies for the purpose of aggregating data

• Use both models and hierarchies in combination with the same financial data item so that you can calculate new data for that item and aggregate it along a hierarchy or hierarchies

Definition: Group solve definition

A group solve definition is a mechanism for solving large quantities of data in multiple financial data items by running a single process. A group solve definition can combine solve definitions and copy data profiles, and run them in a specific order to calculate and aggregate data for any number of financial data items.

You can use group solve definitions to perform complex sets of calculations that need to be completed on a periodic basis. For example, you can set up group solve definitions to solve all of the financial data items that are affected by a particular occurrence in your business cycle.

Reasons to solve data

You solve the data in a financial data item after you have performed any of the following actions:

• Changing or adding an equation in a model for a line item associated with the financial data item

• Changing the aggregation type of a line item dimension associated with the financial data item

• Changing or adding a hierarchy for a dimension associated with the financial data item

• Adding new time periods to your database

• Adding new dimensions to your database

• Adding new financial data items to your database

• Changing the current time period for your database

• Refreshing the financial data item after adding new data

• Entering or changing data for the financial data item through a worksheet, a data entry form, or a copy data event

Solve definitions run on stored financial data items

Because solve definitions and group solve definitions perform calculations or aggregations on actual stored data values, you can run them only on stored financial data items. You cannot run solve definitions or group solve definitions on formula financial data items because formula financial data items contain no actual data values.

Solving versus recalculating data

Chapter 15 describes how you can recalculate data in worksheets. Solving data differs from recalculating data in that solves are performed on models, which are defined using specific financial data items. When you run a solve, it is performed for all financial data items in the model.

When you recalculate data, the recalculation is performed only on the dimensions currently in status in the worksheet.

Who can create solve definitions?

Administrators

As an administrator, it is your responsibility to maintain the solve definitions that your users access in the shared database that you administer. When you create or modify a solve definition and want other users to be able to access it, you must distribute the solve definition to the shared database and to other users.

Budget workstation users

As a Budget workstation user, you can create and modify solve definitions and group solve definitions for personal use. You can modify definitions that your administrator has created for you, but you cannot save the modifications unless you assign a new name to the modified solve definition, retaining the original.

Working with Solve Definitions

Creating a solve definition

You choose Solve Definition from the Tools menu to create a new solve definition. This opens the Solve Definition dialog box where you name the solve definition. From this starting point you can do the following:

• Select the financial data item for the solve definition.

• If you want to use a model to calculate new values for the financial data item, select the model.

• If you want to use a hierarchy to roll data up, select the hierarchy dimension values that you want to include in the rollup.

• Save the solve definition.

Example: Solve definition

The following example shows the Solve Definition dialog box with a solve definition for the Actuals financial data item. The solve definition uses the Profit and Loss model and will aggregate dimensional hierarchies for Organization, Product, and Time.

Text description of the illustration solve.gif

Note: Dealing with zero values in financial data items

When creating formulas for solve definitions, remember that zero values entered into financial data items are stored in the database as NA values. Zero values entered into financial data items through a data reader are stored as zeros. This can affect the results of calculations that use zero values.

Running solve definitions

Both administrators and Budget workstation users can manually run solve definitions from the Solve Definition dialog box.

An administrator can also link a solve definition to a financial data item so that the solve definition runs automatically whenever a user submits data associated with a financial data item to the shared database. This feature is described in "Associating solve definitions with financial data items.

Setting the operational mode for running solve definitions

If you are using an Administrator workstation, where a solve is performed depends on the Operational Mode setting in the Options dialog box. If the Operational Mode is set to Administrator, data models are solved within your personal database. If the Operational Mode is set to Workstation, data models are submitted to the Task Processor and solved in the local shared database.

Modifying solve definitions

You choose Solve from the Tools menu to modify solve definitions. This opens the Solve Definition dialog box, where you can choose the solve definition that you want to modify. You can perform the following tasks:

• You can give a solve definition a new name.

• You can delete a saved solve definition from your personal database. As an administrator, you can also delete a solve definition from the shared database by deleting it from your personal database, and then distributing this change to the shared database.

• You can change the information for a solve definition. For example, you can change the model.

• You can move a solve definition to a new position in the list of solve definitions maintained by the system.

Related information

For more information about using solve definitions, search for the following topics in the Financial Analyzer Help system:

"Creating Solve Definitions"

"Deleting Solve Definitions"

"Moving Solve Definitions"

"Renaming Solve Definitions"

"Running Solve Definitions to Calculate New Data"

"Specifying the Operational Mode"

Working with Group Solve Definitions

Creating a group solve definition

You choose Group Solve Definition from the Tools menu to create a new group solve definition. This opens the Group Solve dialog box. From this starting point, you can name the new group solve definition and use the tabs in the Add to Group Solve box to select solve definitions and copy data profiles to include in the group solve definition.

Example: Group solve definition

The following example shows the Group Solve Definition Dialog box. In this example, the group solve definition includes two solve definitions and a copy data profile.

Text description of the illustration grsolve.gif

Running group solve definitions

Both administrators and Budget workstation users can manually run group solve definitions from the Group Solve Definition dialog box.

An administrator can also link a group solve definition to a financial data item so that the group solve definition runs automatically whenever a user submits data associated with the financial data item to the shared database. This feature is described in "Associating solve definitions with financial data items.

Setting the operational mode for running group solve definitions

If you are using an Administrator workstation, where a group solve is performed depends on the Operational Mode setting in the Options dialog box. If the Operational Mode is set to Administrator, data models are solved in your personal database. If the Operational Mode is set to Workstation, data models are submitted to the Task Processor and solved in the local shared database.

Modifying group solve definitions

You choose Group Solve from the Tools menu to maintain group solve definitions. This opens the Group Solve dialog box, where you can choose the group solve definition that you want to modify. You can perform the following tasks:

• You can give a group solve definition a new name.

• You can delete a group solve definition. As an administrator, you can also delete the group solve definition from the shared database by deleting it from your personal database and then distributing this change.

• You can edit the information for a group solve definition. For example, you can add a solve definition.

• You can move a group solve definition to a new position in the list of group solve definitions maintained by the system.

Related information

For more information about group solve definitions, search for the following topics in the Financial Analyzer Help system:

"Creating Group Solve Definitions"

"Renaming Group Solve Definitions"

"Moving Group Solve Definitions"

"Deleting Group Solve Definitions"

"Running Group Solve Definitions to Calculate New Data"

"Specifying the Operational Mode"

Automatically Running Solves and Group Solves

Associating solve definitions with financial data items

As an administrator, you can define a financial data item so that a solve or group solve runs whenever a user submits data associated with the financial data item to the shared database.

You choose Financial Data Item from the Maintain menu to set up the relationship between a financial data item and a solve or group solve. This opens the Maintain Financial Data Item dialog box, where you can select a financial data item and associate it with a solve definition or group solve definition. After you distribute the financial data item to the shared database, the specified solve or group will run automatically.

Example: Associating a solve definition with a financial data item

The following example shows the Financial Data Item dialog box for Actuals. In this example, the Profile to Solve box shows that a group solve definition, Actuals, is associated with the Actuals financial data item.

Text description of the illustration fdisolve.gif

What happens when data is submitted

Each time a Budget workstation user submits data (or the case of an Analyst workstation user, saves data) for the financial data item, the software automatically initiates the appropriate solve definition or group solve definition to recalculate the data.

The dimension values in status when the solve or group solve takes place is determined by the intersection of the submit status and the solve definition status.

IF the solve profile is . . .	THEN . . .
a solve definition	the status set before the solve is the intersection of the status of the submit with the status set in the solve definition.
a group solve definition	then the status set before each solve definition in the group is: The intersection of the status of the submit with the status set in the solve definition, if the financial data item in the solve definition is one that was used in the submit. The status set by the solve definition if the financial data item in the solve definition was not used in the submit.