Special Characters

In This Section:

Naming Restrictions for Essbase Dimensions, Members, and Aliases

Valid Characters Removed by Analytics Link

Naming Restrictions for Essbase Dimensions, Members, and Aliases

When naming Essbase dimensions, members, and aliases, follow these rules:

  • Use no more than 80 bytes when naming non-Unicode-mode dimensions, members, or aliases.

  • Use no more than 80 characters when naming Unicode-mode dimensions, members, or aliases.

  • Do not use quotation marks (" "), brackets ([ ]), or tabs.

  • Do not place spaces at the beginning or end of names.

  • At the beginning of names, do not use the characters listed in Table 56:

    Table 56. Restricted Characters for Essbase Dimension, Member, and Alias Names

    CharacterDescription

    @

    at sign

    \[1]

    backslash

    { }

    brace

    ,

    comma

    -

    dash, hyphen, or minus

    =

    equal sign

    <

    less-than sign

    ( )

    parentheses

    .

    period

    +

    plus sign

    '

    single quotation mark

    _

    underscore

    |

    vertical bar

    1 If you are using Essbase 11.1.2 with Analytics Link, you can use a backslash at the beginning of Essbase dimension, member, and alias names.

    Note:

    Some Financial Management dimension or member names begin with characters that are not valid in Essbase, as listed in Table 56. When creating the outline, Analytics Link replaces these invalid characters with the string “FM.” For example, [Member] becomes FM Member and <Entity Currency> becomes FM Entity Currency.

  • Do not use the same alias name for two siblings. If two sibling alias names match, Analytics Link creates an alias for the second sibling that is a concatenation of the alias and the “(member name)” string.

Valid Characters Removed by Analytics Link

Analytics Link replaces the characters in Table 57 with spaces, if these characters appear within the Financial Management member name (but not as the first character of the member name):

Table 57. Characters Replaced With Spaces

CharacterDescription
<less-than sign
>greater-than sign
( )parentheses
{ }braces