4.1 Overview of Dimensionality in OFSAA
Dimensions are used to stratify your business data for processing or reporting purposes. For example, at a minimum General Ledger systems are typically stratified by a General Ledger dimension, an organization or cost center dimension, and a time dimension. Customer account level data will normally have these same dimensions but are often additionally segmented by dimensions such as Product or Customer. You may wish to construct models using a specialized product dimension or other customized dimensions such as geography, cost pool, transaction, activity or channel.
Dimensions are comprised of lists of members. For example, the Organizational Unit dimension might be comprised of Branch #1, Branch #2, Branch #3, etc. Some dimensions may contain tens or even hundreds of thousands of members (for example, a large organizational or customer dimension) while others may contain as few as two members (for example, a simple product-type dimension with values of Fixed and Variable).
The member values or "Chart of Accounts" for each dimension may be maintained either internally within the OFSAA Infrastructure or externally
Internally
OFSAA Infrastructure includes functionality for Adding, Viewing, Editing, or Deleting dimension member values. Which of these functions you can access depends on your logon privilege and on the dimension with which you wish to work. For details, on the creation and maintenance of Dimension Members, refer to the Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications Infrastructure User guide.
Externally
You may choose to source and maintain some Charts of Accounts from external systems such as your General Ledger, a Data Warehouse, or from some other external master data management system. For more information, see the Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications Data Model Utilities User Guide.
Combination
You may also choose to maintain some Chart of Account values from an external source while maintaining other Chart of Account values internally.