1. Administrator's Guide
  2. Essbase Naming Conventions
  3. Essbase Naming Restrictions for Dimensions, Members, and Aliases

Essbase Naming Restrictions for Dimensions, Members, and Aliases

When defining dimensional outlines, there are restricted characters that may not be used for naming dimensions, members and aliases.

A list of the most common restricted characters is provided in this section; however, Oracle strongly suggests that you review the Essbase naming conventions described in the Oracle Essbase Database Administrator's Guide for a complete list.

Note:

This list provides a partial set of the restrictions. For the complete list of all restrictions, Oracle recommends that you refer to the Oracle Essbase Database Administrator's Guide:

When naming dimensions, members and aliases, follow these naming restrictions:

  • Use no more than 80 characters.

  • Distinguish between upper and lower case only if case-sensitivity is enabled. To enable case-sensitivity, see "Setting Outline Properties" in the Oracle Essbase Database Administrator's Guide.

  • Do not use HTML tags in dimension or member names, aliases, and descriptions.

  • Do not use quotation marks, periods, brackets, backslashes, or tabs within a name.

    Caution:

    Brackets are permitted but not recommended in block storage outlines because they cause errors when converting to aggregate storage outlines.

  • Duplicate member names or aliases are not allowed within the same dimension.

  • Do not use the following characters to begin dimension or member names:

    • at signs (@)

    • backslashes (\)

    • brackets ([])

    • commas (,)

    • dashes

    • hyphens

    • minus signs (-)

    • equal signs (=)

    • less than signs (<)

    • parentheses ( )

    • periods (.)

    • plus signs (+)

    • single quotation marks (')

    • quotation marks (")

    • underscores (_)

    • vertical bars(|)

  • Do not place spaces at the beginning or end of names, as they are ignored by Oracle Essbase.

  • Do not use forward slashes in member names.

  • For time periods in custom calendars, do not use spaces in prefixes.

  • Do not use the following items as dimension or member names.

    • Calculation script commands, operators or keywords. For a complete list of commands, see the Oracle Essbase Database Administrator's Guide.

    • Report writer commands

    • Function names and function arguments

    • If Dynamic Time Series is enabled, do not use History, Year, Season, Period, Quarter, Month, Week, or Day.

    • Names of other dimensions and members (unless the member is shared), generation names, level names, and aliases in the database.

  • Do not use the following words:

    • ALL

    • AND

    • ASSIGN

    • AVERAGE

    • CALC

    • CALCMBR

    • COPYFORWARD

    • CROSSDIM

    • CURMBRNAME

    • DIM

    • DIMNAME

    • DIV

    • DYNAMIC

    • EMPTYPARM

    • EQ

    • EQOP

    • EXCEPT

    • EXP

    • EXPERROR

    • FLOAT

    • FUNCTION

    • GE

    • GEN

    • GENRANGE

    • GROUP

    • GT

    • ID

    • IDERROR

    • INTEGER

    • LE

    • LEVELRANGE

    • LOOPBLOCK

    • LOOPPARMS

    • LT

    • MBR

    • MBRNAME

    • MBRONLY

    • MINUS

    • MISSING

    • MUL

    • MULOP

    • NE

    • NON

    • NONINPUT

    • NOT

    • OR

    • PAREN

    • PARENPARM

    • PERCENT

    • PLUS

    • RELOP

    • SET

    • SKIPBOTH

    • SKIPMISSING

    • SKIPNONE

    • SKIPZERO

    • TO

    • TOLOCALRATE

    • TRAILMISSING

    • TRAILSUM

    • UMINUS

    • UPPER

    • VARORXMBR

    • XMBRONLY

    • $$UNIVERSE$$

    • #MISSING

    • #MI