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Strange classification between 2 dimensions

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Post  apermag Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:54 pm

Howdy,

A weird question for which I canīt find a convincent answer.

Client wants to see a sales report based on a customized category. This customized category is based on a customer category, but for certain products they want to see the product category instead of the customer category at the same level

Silly example: for customer category "Size", with values "Small", "Medium" and "Big", they want to see them as they are, but they want to add from a product category "Shoes" and "Purses". All ""Shoes" and "Purses" from those 3 cust categories will be part of the new 2 categories.

After this weird explanation, I just have 2 options:

- tell the customer they need to create their own category in each report. This means we wonīt be providing an automated way for final customers, but it could be done through static reports.

- create a dimension as a cartesian product of the categories of customer and product, and manually categorise them with the values we want. Manual work and difficult to maintain if they decide to change the categories, but it will give a straight-forward way for reporting.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

PD: the example is just that, an example. In my case they want to see both product categories because very big areas of sales.

apermag

Posts : 17
Join date : 2011-06-28

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Post  Mike Honey Thu Jan 12, 2012 12:16 am

Hi apermag,

Perhaps you should consider a multi-dimensional analysis tool rather than static reports?

For example you could use Excel Pivot Tables (on top of either Excel data, external data pulled into Excel, PowerPivot in-memory cubes or Analysis Services cubes). There are also lots of other similar tools around for slicing and dicing data. My personal favourite is Excel on Analysis Services cubes - low learning curve + flexible & scalable cube engine.

Once you present your data in this format, the business users can happily slice and analyse the data in whatever combinations they need.

Good luck!
Mike
Mike Honey
Mike Honey

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http://www.mangasolutions.com

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Post  apermag Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:26 pm

Mike Honey wrote:Hi apermag,

Perhaps you should consider a multi-dimensional analysis tool rather than static reports?

For example you could use Excel Pivot Tables (on top of either Excel data, external data pulled into Excel, PowerPivot in-memory cubes or Analysis Services cubes). There are also lots of other similar tools around for slicing and dicing data. My personal favourite is Excel on Analysis Services cubes - low learning curve + flexible & scalable cube engine.

Once you present your data in this format, the business users can happily slice and analyse the data in whatever combinations they need.

Good luck!
Mike

Thanks Mike

We use Cognos for the reports. We can provide a DMR model for them. Anyway, Iīve chosen to not mix anything and not create new dimensions. Iīd rather to not mix meanings in DB. I can always create a query item in the model with all calculations they need without touching the database.


apermag

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Post  Jeff Smith Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:26 pm

The best solution from a modeling standpoint would be new rollup point called "Report Category". I'm not a big believer in having a bunch of code with case statements in a report. That's a recipe for more problems down the road.

Jeff Smith

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Post  apermag Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:31 pm

Jeff Smith wrote:The best solution from a modeling standpoint would be new rollup point called "Report Category". I'm not a big believer in having a bunch of code with case statements in a report. That's a recipe for more problems down the road.

Thanks Jeff.

I agree on the Report Category, but not on having a physical table/dimension associated with the fact. I prefer to provide an object to drag & drop through the Framework Manager model (or Universe in BObj). Reports can use that object and maintenance is reduced to a change in the model, which will be reflected in all reports at once.

I could keep talking about this project and stay hours and hours about strange stuff like this...

apermag

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Post  Vishy Tue Mar 13, 2012 6:20 am

You are using Cognos so cant you create a cube where you provide both these dimension so that customer himself can drag and drop ?If cube is not to be used then you can go for Query studio.

How the DMR is helping here ?

Vishy

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Post  apermag Tue Mar 13, 2012 6:26 am

Vishy wrote:You are using Cognos so cant you create a cube where you provide both these dimension so that customer himself can drag and drop ?If cube is not to be used then you can go for Query studio.

How the DMR is helping here ?

It isnt a matter of cubes, it's a matter of creating a mixed category coming from other dimension's category.
Cubes will do the same as a normal Framework Manager model or as an implemented specific ETL.

DMR will help as much as a relational model. Remember DMR is (usually) based on a relational layer.

apermag

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