Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Make your data Essbase-friendly
The reason this subject is something worth discussing here in Essbase is because
unlike traditional relational database packages, Oracle Essbase includes many
easy to use tools to quickly transform, alter, modify, or otherwise turn questionable
data into good, usable data that can be fully and correctly loaded into your Essbase
database. Creating Essbase-friendly data can be accomplished with a minimum
amount of effort and expense, both on the Essbase side and the data source side,
which is sure to please even the toughest business customer who no doubt is aware
of how creating an extract of data from a traditional system sometimes means a
lot of effort and even the writing of a complex program or two.
First, to make sure you understand, when loading data in Essbase the data must
contain a representative element of data for each dimension in the target Essbase
database's outline. For example, our Esscar database outline contains seven
dimensions, so the data you intend to load must contain an element for each
dimension plus the data value itself, for a total of eight elements of data. The
following figure shows you how your data would look in a perfect world:
Notice there are eight columns of data, one column for each dimension in the
Esscar database outline and the data value itself. Now, as mentioned, this would
be the perfect way to receive data from an outside source. It's too bad this is rarely
the case when receiving data from another department or business activity, even
within your own company. Heck, sometimes data from within the same company
is the most inconsistent.
In the real world, you are lucky when you get the bare minimum of the data
elements you need to satisfy your Essbase requirements from sources external
to your Essbase database. This is not a great concern most of the time with Essbase
and we'll tell you why, then we will take the rest of this chapter to show you how.
Essbase-friendly thoughts
Consider that you have constructed your Essbase database outline to be as flexible and
detailed as possible for your business customer. You know very well that you won't
always get clean data from an external system that will load right into your database.
