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 Administering Oracle Analytics Cloud - Essbase 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 Administering Oracle Analytics Cloud - Essbase:

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

  • For non-Unicode-mode dimensions, members, or aliases, use no more than 80 bytes.

  • For Unicode-mode dimensions, members, or aliases, 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 Administering Oracle Analytics Cloud - Essbase.

  • 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 Administering Oracle Analytics Cloud - Essbase.

    • 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