Selecting Dimension Types

After creating the application, you must select the dimension types that are to be included in the application. All profitability applications have a common set of dimensions that you should include. in addition to the common dimensions, Detailed Profitability and Management Ledger applications include dimensions that are specific to their application types. For a complete description of dimension types and their associated members, see the Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management Administrator's Guide.

The following dimension types are required for all Profitability and Cost Management applications, including Standard, Detailed, and Management Ledger applications:

  • At least one Point of View (POV) dimension type must be defined by the user. The model POV provides a specific view of your model information for a selected point of view or period. For example, POV dimension types may include some of the following dimensions:

    • Year

    • Time

    • Period

    • Scenario

    • Months

    • Financial Quarters

    • Seasons

  • The Alias dimension is optional, and only required if you want to use aliases in your model.

    Caution!

    Duplicate member names or aliases are not allowed.

  • At least one Business Dimension type must be defined by the user. Business dimensions are created to describe the business elements within the model, such as business-specific departments, general ledger accounts, activities, locations, customers, or products.

    Generic business dimensions may include some of the following examples, and may apply to one or more stages or models:

    • Accounting dimensions may contain chart of account-type information, such as Net Income and Sales, in applications.

    • Organizational dimensions may outline departments, task forces, or other internal or external groups, such as Human Resources, Information Technology, and so on.

    • National or country dimensions may be used to track business activities in multiple countries, states, provinces or locations.

      Note:

      Although these business dimensions can be included as part of a Profitability and Cost Management application, when the Essbase outlines are deployed, they are created as basic or generic dimensions, with no type.

  • Attribute dimensions are a special type of dimension that are associated with a business dimension, and contain members that can be used to classify members of another, associated dimension. Attribute dimensions describe characteristics of data, such as the size and color of products

    There are two Attribute dimension types in Performance Management Architect:

    • Attribute dimensions:

      • The attribute can be created using different structures, such as Boolean, Date, Numeric and Text.

      • An attribute has a hierarchy, and the hierarchies can be rolled up for aggregate values.

      • Only one attribute from a given attribute dimension can be associated with one member.

    • User-defined attribute dimensions (UDAs):

      • The attribute can only be created using Text.

      • A UDA does not have a hierarchy, and cannot be easily used in reports to generate sums.

      • Multiple UDAs can be associated with a member.

    Each type of attribute dimension offers different advantages, depending on the requirements for your model and reporting needs.

Note:

Model stages are not dimensions, and are therefore not available in Performance Management Architect. Stages are added to a model in Profitability and Cost Management, and are used to organize dimensions into logical steps or stages.

Standard Profitability applications should also contain the following two system dimensions:

  • The Measures dimension contains the members required to build, validate and calculate a model, including driver measures, reporting measures, and allocation measures. Users may add any user-defined driver measures (or sub-hierarchies) to the hierarchy under the member 'UserDefinedDriverMeasures'.

  • The AllocationType dimension is used to store direct allocations and allocation genealogy.

Detailed Profitability applications should also contain the MeasuresDetailed dimension. The MeasuresDetailed dimension is a reserved dimension that is required for calculation and stage balancing. It contains Allocation Measures, but does not include Driver measures.

Caution!

Do not edit this dimension, as modifications may result in the loss of data or the corruption of your model.

Management Ledger applications should also contain the following system dimensions:

  • The Balance dimension tracks the movement of data in and out of the intersections of the modeling dimensions (like cost center, account, and so on), the net change, current balance, and remainders.

  • The Rule dimension tracks the specific rule that caused the data movements.

After creating the application, select the dimensions to be added to the application using the appropriate procedure: