Essbase Studio Recursive build with Attributes

I’ve used Essbase Studio a little as many of you might know and I like the tool, but once in a while I get perplexed on how to do something I think should be simple. The other day I had a rush requirement to build an attribute dimension based on a table the used a recursive hierarchy in an ASO cube I was developing for a client. Pretty simple I thought, I’ll just add it in like I normally do and it will just work. I should know better. I spent a day and a half trying to figure out what was going on. To start out I had defined my Hierarchy as:

Parent
	Child
ISICP
	Child

and in 11.1.2.2 it gave me the very nice warning that it could affect existing Essbase Models. I bravely went on and after doing a resync of the hierarchy (god I love that the Studio team added that) , I went into my Essbase Model and added the Attribute dimension. I then tried to deploy the cube. What I got back was the error:

Failed to deploy Essbase cube.

Caused by: Cannot end incremental build. Essbase Error(1060053): Outline has errors

\\Outline verification errors:

\\Attribute Dimension ISISP is not associated to the base dimension

\\Record #2 - Member name (BalanceSheet) already used

BalanceSheet Assets

\\Record #4 - Member name (CurAsset) already used

CurAsset CashMktSec

\\Record #6 - Member name (TotCash) already used

TotCash CashPetty

\\Record #7 - Member name (TotCash) already used

TotCash CashatBank

In variations of testing, I also got:

Failed to deploy Essbase cube.

Caused by: Failed to build Essbase cube dimension: (Scenario) .

Caused by: Cannot end stream build. Essbase Error(1007083): Dimension build failed. Error code [1060246]. Check the server log file and the dimension build error file for possible additional info.

\\Error Updating Dimension Acct_W_ICP

\\Error Initializing Rule File Information

At this point I was befuddled, I spent a few more hours making sure the view I was using only had the Attribute value on the level zero child members and tried variations creating the hierarchy different ways. I tried filters to limit the members, an outer join to another view that just had the level zero members, Adding user created members as the parent values all with no luck. If I took out the attribute Hierarchy, the build worked fine.

With deadlines looming and no hope in sight, I opened an SR with Oracle to see if I could get some help. I was able to get in touch with Lyudmila the QA manager for the Essbase Studio team. Her help was invaluable and I owe her a debt of gratitude. She was able to replicate my issue based on info I sent her. The first issue she was able to determine was not with my problem dimension but with my Scenario dimension. Remember the error:

Caused by: Failed to build Essbase cube dimension: (Scenario) .

Caused by: Cannot end stream build. Essbase Error(1007083): Dimension build failed. Error code [1060246]. Check the server log file and the dimension build error file for possible additional info.

\\Error Updating Dimension Acct_W_ICP

My Scenario dimension was made up of a single user defined member “Actual”. This is a place holder for later. It turns out with this combination the scenario dimension followed by a dimension building attributes, you get errors. She was nice enough to open a bug report on this.

But I was still having problems and she was not. Hmm, I started to look at the screen shots she was sending me of the cube she built and realized that she built a BSO cube and I was working on an ASO cube. I was trying to build the attribute on the Accounts dimension. Essbase Studio was nice enough to let me know you are not allowed to have attributes on the compression dimension, so I had turned that off. The error I was getting looked like:

Failed to deploy Essbase cube.

Caused by: Cannot end incremental build. Essbase Error(1060053): Outline has errors

\\Outline verification errors:

\\Attribute Dimension ISICP is not associated to the base dimension

\\Error Associating Dimension "ISICP" to "Acct_W_ICP"

\\Error Initializing Rule File Information

\\Record #8476 - Error in association transaction [410100.10.COGSDir] to [N] (3362)

410100.10.COGSDir N

\\Record #8477 - Error in association transaction [410100.30.COGSDir] to [N] (3362)

410100.30.COGSDir N

\\Record #8478 - Error in association transaction [410100.50.COGSDir] to [N] (3362)

I started looking through the documentation and found a single line in the comparison of ASO to BSO that said you are not allowed to have attributes on the dimension tagged as accounts. Bummer. Not a Studio, but is is making me revisit how I build the cube.

I’m in the process of converting the Accounts dim to not be tagged as accounts, take my Time balance tags and change them into UDAs and use the code from Gary Crisci’s blog entry to add the required formulas in my view dimension to add time balance functionality.

In the near future I’ll also have a blog entry on some interesting things I’ve seen on drill through with recursive hierarchies.