Joining data in two universes from different data sources

X-cc: Jessie Yeh yehwc@yahoo.com,
Brad Yearwood bradyearwood@hotmail.com, Rama Vemparala Vemparala.Rama.r000@sysco.com, Kevin Scoggins kscoggins@wciconsulting.com, Dani D Rubinoff drubinoff@wciconsulting.com, Francis Mathenge fmathenge@wciconsulting.com, Mikhail Kaminski mkami1977@hotmail.com, Tracey Dai tracei_d@yahoo.com,
DebraAnn Braun debrabraun@earthlink.net

A customer wants to know how to link information from two universes, each based on a totally different Oracle tablespace (one is a datawarehouse and one is an Oracle reporting database). I thought I had done this before, but I couldn’t get the concept to work.

I tried using 2 access databases, built a simple universe (one table) on each. Then I created a report having 2 data providers, one for each universe. Since BO 5 didn’t link the data providers, I manually linked on the common field. When I tried to combine information from both data providers, I got the incompatible objects error. (1 table has 3 dimensions and the other table has 2 different dimensions). Exporting the universes and linking them didn’t help either. Is there a way to resolve this problem given the different dimensions in each table?

Thanks,


Michael Malone
Senior Consultant
WCI Consulting


Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

In a message dated 00-03-22 15:30:48 EST, you write:

When I tried to combine information from both data
providers, I got the incompatible objects error. (1 table has 3 dimensions and the other table has 2 different dimensions). Exporting the universes and linking them didn’t help either. Is there a way to resolve this problem given the different dimensions in each table?

Short answer: any dimensions not linked cannot be used. Can you change the values to details instead?

Medium answer: dimensions are assumed to be key fields. If you try to join two tables without using all of the keys, you will get a cartesian product. For that reason, BusObj will not allow unlinked dimensions to be used in the same block.

Long answer: to get around this, you have to consider your data. Are some of the objects truly supporting information? If so, they could be defined as detail objects. Detail objects are supported information for dimensions. When you link data providers, you must link all dimensions. Detail objects can then be included as long as their associated dimension is included.

Measures do not suffer from this restriction, yet they may give you the wrong answer if you do not link data providers appropriately.

Regards,
Dave Rathbun
Integra Solutions
www.islink.com


Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)