Chapter 3
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As you can see in the preceding screenshot, most of your data will have Calendar
Periods
associated with it, so it would most likely be tagged as a Dense dimension.
The
Vehicles dimension would more than likely be tagged as Sparse. You may
want to tag the
Vehicles dimension as Sparse because while you have vehicles for
sale in all markets and probably have vehicle sales for all calendar periods, you will
not have all vehicle models for sale in all markets. You may also not have sales for
all vehicle models in all calendar periods.
For example, not all of Esscar's vehicles sell in all markets listed in the outline.
The data is sparsely distributed across the data blocks. On the other hand, all of
the data in your database ties to the
Scenario dimension, so that data is densely
populated across data blocks. You would set the
Market dimension to Sparse
and the Scenario dimension to Dense.
Build your rst outline
That's it! Your brain is just chocked full of Essbase database outline knowledge.
Let's build an Essbase database outline using the EAS.
Within EAS, perform the following tasks:
Double–click, to expand in the EAS, on ESSBASE Severs then Applications then
ESSCAR (Application) then ESSCAR (database) and nally Outline. The ESSCAR
database outline is opened in the Essbase Outline Editor as shown in screenshot
below. Remember, as we said before, this is basically a placeholder outline created
for you by Essbase when you created the new database.
Your job is to now build this outline into a fully functioning Essbase database outline
that will support a real database.
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Building the Essbase Outline
[ 76 ]
The steps to add dimensions and members to an Essbase database outline are:
1. Begin by right-clicking on Outline, and then click on Add Child.
2. Enter CALENDAR PERIODS to name this new member and create
your rst Essbase database dimension.
Remember, any child member that is added to the main outline is considered
a data dimension in the Essbase outline. When you right-click on the data
dimension, you will see an entirely new set of options. If your preference is to
left-click (right and left mouse click, assumes right-handed mouse operation)
you will activate an assortment of Easy Access Menu buttons where you can
choose the types of dimensions as shown in the following screenshot:
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Chapter 3
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Since CALENDAR PERIODS is supposed to be our time dimension, we will tag this
dimension as the Time dimension type. Right-click on the CALENDAR PERIODS,
click on Add Children, and enter Year 2009. To add another year, right-click on Year
2009, click on Add Sibling, and enter Year 2008 and so on. Keep going until you add
year members to Year 2006.
Following this same procedure, you can right-click on the year members you have
just added and now add quarter periods as children to them. Once you have the
quarter periods added (use the screenshot below as a guide) you will then add the
month members to the quarters. While this may seem to be an inefcient and tedious
task, it is necessary that you learn to be comfortable with manually editing an
Essbase database outline.

Never fear! Editing a database outline manually is not the only way to update it.
Shortly, we will explain the use of data Load Rules that can be used to load data into
the database and automatically update the outline. These automated processes can
be used for a variety of tasks from adding new members to the outline to performing
database maintenance.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Paul Corcorran on 5th July 2009
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Building the Essbase Outline
[ 78 ]
Member properties
Member properties are characteristics, set by you, that determine the behavior of
the data stored in your database. For example, it is quite natural to want to know
the value of sales for a quarter. If you set the consolidation property of each month
member to (+) and calculate the database, the calendar quarter value will be the sum
of the three child members under it which are the individual months. There is no
need to load data at the calendar quarter's level since you can calculate it from the
individual month's level.
There are also storage properties that Essbase uses to determine how the data is
stored in the database. The following is a detailed explanation of member properties
and their uses.
Member consolidations
When you dene a new child member of a dimension, you need to tag that member
with a consolidation operator. A consolidation operator will tell Essbase how this
member will be calculated along with its sibling member(s) upto the parent member.
Get familiar with the term rolled up because you will hear that term a lot when
discussing how you are calculating your data. The term rolled up means summing
children members to a parent member. When you sum the months of a quarter
member, you are rolling up the months. Think of rolling up the same as adding up.
The default property setting is the addition (+) operator.

Very important!
Depending on the dimension selected and the method of calculation,
Essbase will either perform a top-down or a bottom-up calculation. What
this means is that when setting up your database outline, the physical
placement of members can be equally as important as the property settings.
This will be explained in more detail later in this section. Looking at the
Calendar Periods dimension, the path of calculation for Quarter
1 would be January then February, if (+) is selected as the operator for
February, add February to January then look at March, again if March is
tagged with the (+) operator, then add March to February which is already
the total of January and February. This is rolling up the data!
Valid consolidation operators
The proper setting of the database member consolidation operators is critical
to the correct calculation of your data. A complete list of the available member
consolidation operators with a brief explanation of their function is listed as follows:
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Chapter 3
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• Addition (+)—adds this member to the result of the previously calculated
sibling member calculation
• Subtraction (-)—multiplies the member by (-1) then adds the product
to the result of the previously calculated member.
• Multiplication (*)—multiplies this member by the result of the previously
calculated member
• Division (/)—divides the result of the previously calculated member
by this member
• Percent (%)—divides the previously calculated member result by this
member and multiples it by 100

• Exclude from consolidation (~)—do not consolidate (ignore) this member
• Never consolidate (^)—do not use this member in any consolidation in
any dimension
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Paul Corcorran on 5th July 2009
8601 ave. p #1, , lubbock, , 79423
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