Dimensions and metadata are created and maintained by the Profitability and Cost Management Administrator, using Performance Management Architect. By using common dimensions and members, Profitability and Cost Management can easily use and transfer common data with other products, such as Planning, saving time and effort, and improving accuracy. For detailed information on creating and maintaining dimensions and metadata, see the Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management Architect Administrator's Guide.
Profitability and Cost Management uses the dimensions and members created in Performance Management Architect to represent many of the structural elements of the business model:
Dimensions that provide the structure for the model and scenarios, such as the Measures dimensions.
Business dimensions that reflect the business-specific elements of the model, such as departments, General Ledger accounts, activities, customers, or products
Point Of View (POV) dimensions, such as time periods, scenarios and versions
Alias dimensions, as required
Attribute dimensions, as required
For each dimension, both a dimension type and dimension name must be specified:
Dimension type is a dimension property that enables the use of predefined functionality for selected dimensions. See Dimension Types.
Dimension name is assigned to identify the contents of the dimension, in relation to your organization or business. For example, a dimension of Account type may be given a dimension name, such as General Ledger or Chart of Accounts. The dimension name does not need to reflect the dimension type, although it may. For naming restrictions, see Essbase Naming Restrictions for Dimensions, Members, and Aliases.
Using Performance Management Architect, dimensions can exist in an Application either as Shared or Local:
Shared Dimensions reside in the Shared Library in Performance Management Architect, and can be used by multiple products and applications.
Local Dimensions are detached, independent dimensions that only exist in one application instance, such as an application of type Profitability and Cost Management. These dimensions are used only within that application for which they have been created, and are not visible or usable even for another application of the same type.
Through Performance Management Architect, you select dimensions and members that exist in other products, or create new dimensions and members specifically for the model. After the dimensions and members are selected for the Profitability and Cost Management model, they are automatically available in the Dimension Library. After deployment, the dimensions and members are available in the Profitability and Cost Management application.
Both the system-generated and user-defined dimensions and members must exist in Performance Management Architect. Dimensions may contain alphanumeric characters, or calculated values.
Caution! | Although there is no physical limit to the number of dimensions and members that can be created, performance issues occur with large dimensional structures. |
The sort order for dimensions in a Profitability and Cost Management model must be set in a certain sequence, to maximize processing and calculation. See Dimension Sort Order and Density Settings.
For detailed instructions on creating and maintaining the dimensions and members, see the Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management Architect Administrator's Guide and the Oracle Essbase Database Administrator's Guide.
See these sections for information about the Profitability and Cost Management dimensions: