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Siebel Data Warehouse Installation and Administration Guide > Setting System Preferences and Using Exception Reports > Using the Exception Report and Diagnostic Views >

Understanding Exceptions

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Exception reports are defined for the following components:

• List of Values. Identifies gaps and overlaps for certain LOV types.
• Cost Lists. Identifies products for which the cost lists have not been defined. Identifies the cost lists which define costs for a product in a certain currency for overlapping periods of time.
• Exchange Rates. Currency Exchange rates that do not change over a period of time. If exchange rates are not defined for more than 30-day intervals, then they are flagged as an exception.
• Hierarchies. Entities that have circular references are flagged as exceptions. The Siebel Data Warehouse supports 10 levels of hierarchies. If there are entities that have more than 10 levels of hierarchies defined, they are flagged as exceptions.

List Of Values Exceptions

List of Values include High and Low values that can be used as bucket values in categories for effective analysis. If these values are not contiguous (such as gaps or overlaps in defined values), the ETL process cannot accurately categorize the values.

An example of List of Values exceptions is shown in Table 18.

Table 18.  List of Values Exceptions (Example)

Type	Name	Low	High
MY_TYPE	< 100	10	100
MY_TYPE	80 - 200	80	200
MY_TYPE	250 - 300	250	300
MY_TYPE	350 - 400	350	400

Notice that, in the example for Type MY_TYPE, there are overlaps and gaps between records. There is an overlap of ranges between the first and second row. There is a gap between second and third row, and between third and fourth rows.

The following LOV types are analyzed for List of Value Exceptions:

• ACCNT_REVENUE_SIZE
• ACCNT_EMP_SIZE
• LEAD_AGE_DAYS
• OPTY_REVENUE_SIZE
• OPTY_UNIT_SIZE
• ACCNT_REVENUE
• QUOTE_AGE_DAYS
• ACCNT_REVN_GROWTH
• APPROVAL_AUTH_SIZE
• SR_CHART_AGE
• ASSET_COST_CATEGORY

Cost List Exceptions

Cost Lists for specified products and currency should not have overlapping time periods. If multiple cost lists are defined for a product and currency during a given time period, then the cost for the product may not be computed correctly in the Siebel Data Warehouse.

An example of Cost List exceptions is shown in Table 19.

Table 19.  Cost List Exceptions (Example)

Cost List	Product Name	Currency	Start Date (MM-DD-YYYY)	End Date (MM-DD-YYYY)	Cost
Cost List 1	Product 1	USD	01-01-2000	12-31-2000	10.00
Cost List 2	Product 1	USD	06-01-2000	06-01-2001	12.00
Cost List 3	Product 1	USD	06-01-2001	06-01-2002	13.00

In the example, Cost List 1 and 2 have definitions of cost overlapping over 06-01-2000 to 12-31-2000.

Products Without a Cost List

During the ETL process, the costs of the products are calculated based on the Cost List table. If the cost lists are not defined correctly, the cost of the products cannot be calculated correctly in the Siebel Data Warehouse. This exception mapping queries the product table and looks for a minimum of one cost list to be defined. The products with no cost list definition are flagged as exceptions.

Exchange Rate Exceptions

The Siebel Data Warehouse supports transactions in many different currencies. Siebel Analytics converts all currencies in the Siebel Data Warehouse to a single currency for analysis purposes. The ETL Base Exchange Currency parameter in System Preferences, indicates the currency to which all the financial amounts will be converted. The Exchange rates are derived from the Exchange Rate tables in the Siebel transactional database. If the currency exchange rates do not change for a period of 30 days, then Siebel Analytics flags it as an exception.

If there are time period gaps in the exchange rate data, the ETL process defaults to the most recent recorded exchange rate. If the actual exchange rate is significantly more or less favorable than what is recorded in the database, the outdated exchange rate distorts the true value of currency amounts in the Siebel Data Warehouse.

NOTE:  Exchange rates are derived from records that are of type "Daily" in the Siebel transactional database. If any other types have been defined, they are not handled without some customization.

Invalid Hierarchy Exceptions

Accounts, divisions, products, and opportunities can all have hierarchical relationships. These entities are denormalized within the Siebel Data Warehouse database to a fixed number of levels. Siebel Analytics supports up to ten hierarchies levels in the Siebel transactional database. If the depth of hierarchies extends beyond this number, results become inconsistent or incomplete.

Circular Hierarchy Exceptions

Circular Hierarchies arise when the parent-child relationship has a circular references. For example:

Child	Parent
A1	A2
A2	A1

Siebel Analytics flags exceptions for two levels. Circular references over two hierarchies are not flagged. For example:

Child	Parent
A1	A2
A2	A3
A3	A1

These produce infinite levels of hierarchies. The same records will be captured under the Invalid Hierarchy exceptions as their hierarchy depths will increase beyond 10 levels.

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