About Alias Tables

You can assign one or more alternate names (aliases) to a member or a shared member. Aliases can improve the readability of an outline or a report. For example, members of the Product dimension of the Sample Basic database are identified both by product codes, such as 100, and by more descriptive aliases, such as Cola.

Alias names for members are stored in one or more tables as part of a database. Every block storage or aggregate storage database has a table named Default and can have up to 31 additional tables, for a total of 32 alias tables per database. In databases that allow duplicate member names, an alias table can contain duplicate alias names. You can use either of the following approaches to create alias tables:

The alias table, Default, is the default active alias table. Because Outline Editor displays names in the outline tree from only one alias table at a time, to display aliases from a different table than Default, you must set an alias table as the active alias table for the outline.

Aliases are also used in other circumstances such as in reports and in spreadsheet displays. You can select a different table to be the active alias table for database activities outside Outline Editor.

In addition, Outline Editor enables you to perform the following operations while working with alias tables:

You can also map aliases to dimensions and members by using rules files for dimension builds. In the rules file you can use the generation, level, or parent-child reference build methods, specifying alias as the field type for the field in the dimension build data source that contains the alias value. For details on setting field type information, see the Oracle Essbase Database Administrator's Guide.

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