I am building a data mart for a financial application. I have hundreds of measures and a much smaller number of dimensions. I have the following questions (for now):
Is there an easy way to prepare standard financial reports in
BusObj? BusObj seems to prefer
to live in a column world, while financial reporting tends to be a row-oriented application. I can
build the financial reports one row at a time, but it is a tedious process.
Charting of financial data also seems difficult. For example, I
tried to build a pie chart showing
a breakdown of assets. BusObj wants at least one measure. I really don’t have a measure.
I selected basic financial data for one institution, and retrieved a large number of
financial measurement data about that institution. My pie chart would be just for that
institution (e.g., my one measure). There really isn’t (shouldn’t be) a measure in that
very simple pie chart.
Should I just use BusObj to build my data cube, then do my real
reporting/charting work
in Excel?
What does Business Query give me that I can’t accomplish by simply
pasting my data
cube into a worksheet?
Is there an easy way to prepare standard financial reports in
BusObj? Since I don’t know the model of your mart or what makes up your universe objects, I can explain what has worked for me. Data is stored at the some level of detail (maybe at the transaction). Then have a lookup table which may have sub-accounts which rolls up to an account which rolls up to a class which rolls up to a category. Each transaction is related to the lookup table. There’s a measure object called Amount (based off the transaction table). In the query, pull in SubAccount, Account, Class, Category, Year, and Amount. Create a crosstab report with Year as the Row, Amount as the Body and the rest of the objects as the columns. Next create breaks on all the columns except SubAccount. Place a break header on each of the breaks and remove the footers (unless you need subtotals). Then move the detail information (Account, Class, Category) into the to the break header cells above SubAccount. Lastly, remove the blank rows. (oh, by the way, I learned this trick in Creating Documents found on www.bobooks.com) The other thing that I have used is a user defined sort order which is placed on the lookup table, queried and reported on accordingly.
Charting assets. Not sure what you mean here. The way I have created this type of chart is by using a Dimension object called Asset (which points to the name or type of asset) and a measure object called Amount (which maps to the dollar amount). Query those two and you can create a pie chart.
Hopefully that gives you some ideas to get started. Best Regards, Lori Lori_SAGE@solution4u.com
SAGE Solutions, Inc.