Detail Objects and Merged Dimensions

Detail objects are associated with dimensions and provide additional information about the dimension.

 

Web Intelligence XI R2 requires a one-to-one relationship between dimensions and details (this means that a detail object can have one value only for each value of its associated dimension) and does not take detail objects into account when synchronizing data. The following example illustrates why this is necessary.

 

Previous versions of Web Intelligence, as well as Desktop Intelligence and BusinessObjects, allow a one-to-many relationship between dimensions and details. If you migrate a report created using any of these products and the detail object contains multiple values, Web Intelligence places the #MULTIVALUE error in the detail cell.

Example: Synchronizing data providers with detail objects

In this example you have two data providers, and [Address] is a detail object related to [Customer]:

Customer Address Revenue
John London 10000
Paul Liverpool 15000
Customer Number of sales

John

1234
Paul 5678

If you create a merged Customer dimension to synchronize the data providers, and Address can have more than one value for each customer, the result is ambiguous because there is no common value around which Web Intelligence can synchronize the data.

 

For example, Paul might have addresses in Liverpool and London, which means that there is no unique 'Paul' row with which Web Intelligence can synchronize Paul's telephone number. Paul has a different telephone number for each address, and Web Intelligence does not know which address to associate with the telephone number:

Customer Address Telephone Number
John London 1234
Paul #MULTIVALUE 5678

If the relationship between Customer and Address is one-to-one, Web Intelligence can ignore Address in the synchronization. This removes the ambiguity:

Customer Address Telephone Number
John London 1234
Paul Liverpool 5678