Editing auto-generated dimension values

Load an auto-generated dimension and then promote its dimension values to make them editable.

Normally, auto-generated dimension values cannot be edited. They are generated by Forge behind the scenes and maintained in state files. With an auto-generated dimension, you can configure the dimension's behavior, but you cannot configure the behavior of individual dimension values within the dimension. Endeca's load and promote functionality, however, allows you to load an auto-generated dimension and then promote its dimension values so that they become editable.

Loading versus promoting

The process of converting an auto-generated dimension has been broken down into two distinct steps, loading and promoting. Loading displays the auto-generated dimension values so that you can inspect them before promoting them. In addition, loaded dimension values can be used in the following ways. You can:

Use them in dynamic business rules.
Use them in precedence rules.
Modify their ranking.
Enable/disable their inert and Collapsible features.

After loading a dimension, you have the option of promoting its dimension values. Promoting a dimension's values converts them to manual dimension values, with all of the editing capability of a regular manually created dimension value. Promotion is done on a per dimension basis. In other words, when you promote a dimension, all of its dimension values are promoted; you cannot pick individual dimension values to promote and leave others to be auto-generated. It is important to note that, after promotion, you can no longer treat a promoted dimension as auto-generated. All configuration and editing must be performed manually at this point.

Loading and promoting requirements

Loading and promoting auto-generated dimensions has two requirements:

You must use Endeca Workbench and EAC. Endeca Workbench stores temporary copies of auto-generated dimensions. This is the location that Developer Studio retrieves them from during loading.
A dimension must be auto-generated before it can be loaded and/or promoted. This means that you must have already run Forge at least once before attempting to load and promote auto-generated dimensions.

Cleaning up after promoting dimensions

After you promote auto-generated dimension values, you must run a baseline update with Forge's

--pruneAutoGen

flag. The flag cleans out any promoted dimensions from the auto-generated state files. This step is necessary in order to avoid any potential duplicate dimensions in your output records.