Smart View issues with alternate Hierarchy – Surprises in Essbase Part VI 20


I know that most of you are aware of the term “Fully qualified member names” in Essbase. For those who are not go through MDX Syntax for Specifying Duplicate Member Names and Aliases.
There was a question raised by Martin S on network54 saying that he is seeing that member names are appearing with square brackets and periods. (The way how a duplicate member is referenced, name enclosed in square brackets([]) and separated by a period.)
My first response was “Are you having duplicate members in your outline?”. After posting the answer (question actually) I went back and checked Sample Basic to see what he is talking about.
To my surprise what Martin S is seeing is indeed a weird behavior. Let’s see what it is.
Smart View retrieval from Sample Basic application. Nothing strange here. So the next step was to perform a member selection operation on Product. (The reason why Product is selected – well I know there is an alternate hierarchy)
Nothing strange here. Now let’s change the alias to None.
Let’s do the member selection again.
Oh yes, the alternate hierarchy is now represented as a fully qualified name.
What happens if I use those members in a report?
Will I get the correct numbers?
If you answered “Yes”, you lost 1 Million Dollar 🙂
The retrieval was done by removing “Preserve Formulas and Comments in ad hoc operations (except pivot)”. (When it is “ON” Smart View interprets those members as comments).
Tim Tow pointed out that The code in 11.1.2.3 is returning TRUE for IEssMemberCell.isNonUnique() method whereas in earlier versions of Essbase it returned false. (I believe him, he is Mr. API 🙂 )
I tested the same on 11.1.2.2.000 Essbase and Smart View 11.1.2.2.310 and 11.1.2.2.000 and both returned the same results (alternate were represented as fully qualified).
If you are using an earlier version of Essbase and Smart View (pre 11.1.2.2) I would love to know the results.

About Celvin Kattookaran

I’m an EPM Consultant, my primary focus is on Hyperion Planning and Essbase. Some of you from Hyperion Support team might recognize me or have seen my support articles, I was with the WebAnalysis Support Team. I'm an Independent Consultant with “Intekgrate Corporation” based out of Aurora office. I’m from God’s Own Country (Kerala, India), lived in all southern states of India, Istanbul and Johannesburg (and of course United States). I’m core gamer :) and an avid reader. I was awarded Oracle ACE Director for my contributions towards EPM community.

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