Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
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 define 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:
