Dimension Management

A dimension consists of members. If the members of a dimension are arranged in a hierarchical order, the relationship between members is described with terms such as Parent, Child, and Sibling.

Managing dimensions involves tasks such as creating new dimensions, defining members, and assigning properties. You manage dimensions in an application set using the dimension library. The dimensions in an application set's dimension library can be added to one or more applications in the application set.

Features

You can manage dimensions in the following ways:

Creating dimensions

You add dimensions to the dimension library of an application set to make them available to your applications. You can create a new dimension or copy an existing dimension.

You can create a new dimension by clicking Add a new dimension from the Dimensions Tasks action pane, then entering the required data. Dimension names are not case sensitive and display in the case you typed; dimension names must be unique regardless of case.

Specifying reference dimensions

When adding a new dimension, you can specify a reference dimension to validate a property of your dimension with the dimension member IDs of a different dimension. When you process the dimension, Planning and Consolidation checks the values of the reference dimension property (see Dimension Processing). Validation does not complete if they do not pass validation. The following table shows the dimension validation rules:

Dimension Type	Reference Type	Property Name	Reference Attribute Name
A — ACCOUNT	A — ACCOUNT	RATETYPE	ID
C — CATEGORY	T — TIME	YEAR	YEAR
E — ENTITY	R — CURRENCY	CURRENCY	ID
I — INTERCOMPANY	E — ENTITY	ENTITY	ID

Copying dimensions

You can copy an existing dimension within the dimension library of an application set by selecting a dimension and choosing Copy a dimension from the Dimension tasks action pane. You then select an existing dimension, enter a new name and description, then modify its members or properties if needed.

Naming conventions

You can use any name you want for a dimension as long as you follow these guidelines:

When defining or importing dimensions or other metadata such as applications, members, or security profiles in the NetWeaver BW table, do not use special characters such as accented characters or Cyrillic fonts in IDs.
Create dimension names with a maximum of 16 characters and without single quotation marks ('), double quotation marks ("), back slashes (\), or ampersands (&). Dimension IDs cannot contain a dash (-), but can support an underscore (_).
Do not use the following names: App, AppAccess, AvlObject, CategoryAccess, CollabDoc, CollabIcons, CollabRecipient, CollabSupport, CollabType, DBVERSION, Defaults, DesktopStyleDef, Dimension, DrillDef, DTIParam, Function, Formula, Group, InvestParam, MemberAccess, MessageLog, Packages, PageDef, Permission, PublishedBooks, Rate, ReportParam, SectionDef, Status, StatusCode, TaskAccess, User, UserGroup, UserPackages, UserPovDef, WebContents, SOURCE, SIGNEDDATA
Create dimension descriptions with a maximum of 50 characters and without double quotation marks (").

You have the ability to control the length of the user-defined properties to meet your needs. For information about changing the length of a property, see Member Behavior using Dimension Properties.

You can add new properties to a dimension through Maintain dimension property, if needed.

Deleting dimensions

You can delete dimensions from an application set by choosing Dimension Library from the Admin Console, then choosing Delete dimension from the Manage Dimensions action pane. Select one or more dimensions, then choose Delete Selected Dimensions. You cannot delete a dimension when it is being used by an application.