Building Duplicate Member Outlines

Duplicate member outlines contain multiple members with the same name, where the values are not shared. In unique member outlines, only shared members can have the same name. See Creating and Working With Duplicate Member Outlines.

The rules file enables you to set whether dimensions, levels, and generations in a duplicate member outline are unique or can include duplicate members.

Uniquely Identifying Members Through the Rules File

To ensure that duplicate member outline hierarchies are built correctly, use qualified member names in the data source or use the rules file to construct qualified member names from fields in the data source.

In most situations, the reference method and arrangement of fields provide enough information for Essbase to map data source columns to members in a duplicate member outline. The dimension build rules file for duplicate member is similar to the rules file for unique member outlines.

The following operations require more complex rules files for qualified member names:

• Parent-child dimension builds: The parent-child build method requires two fields, one for parent and one for child. For duplicate member situations the parent field must contain the qualified member name. Parent-child dimension builds on duplicate member outlines do not support attribute association. To ensure that attributes are associated with the correct members, perform the associations in a separate pass, using a generation-reference or level-reference rules file.

• Association of attributes to existing members in the outline: For duplicate member situations, the field to which the attribute is associated must contain the qualified member name.

Building Qualified Member Names Through the Rule File

If the source data does not contain the qualified member name as a field, you can use a rule to edit and join multiple fields, resulting in qualified member names.

To create qualified member names, use static values to create brackets and periods, and moves/joins to build the names. For example, you can assign population attributes to existing city members in a duplicate member dimension. You can use join, move, and create operations to build the qualified name.

For example, assume the cities in the following source of data already exist in the outline. You want to associate with the cities the population attributes in the last column of this four-column source of data:

Central  "Kansas City"  Missouri    1070052
East     "New York"     Albany  8104079

Editing this source through the rule to build qualified names and sequence the field columns properly involves the following edits (make them in Preview mode so you can see the static values in the preview data):

1. Using Create With Static Value,

   
   
   
   
   

   create one field each for the following text elements:

   • [

   • ].[

   • ].[

   • ]

   • Using Move operations, move the fields to the following sequence:

     1   2         3     4        5    6            7   8
     [   Central   ].[   Missouri   ].[  Kansas City  ]   706010

   • Use Join operations to make the elements into two fields:

     1                                 2
      [Central].[Missouri].[Kansas City]  706010