TM1 Forum

Hi Everyone,

Please forgive me ask this stupid question. I just shift the system from Oracle HFM to TM1. There is one thing I am quite confuse at TM1 is about the dimension index. In HFM, when I write calculation rule, I always use the parent-child relationship to identify the elements involve in a calculation. For example, run this rule at all base accounts under "Total Assets". I do not need to take care about the exact index number of the element.

May I know whether this is the same case in TM1?

Thanks.

James

You would write the rule in TM1 similar to how you did it in HFM, you don't need to account for the element index. In TM1, you can use ELISANC or ELPAR to determine if element is descendant/child of "TOTAL ASSETS".

I really only use an element's index when looping through elements of a dimension in a TI process or using DIMIX to determine if an element exists in the dim. You could use the element index in a time dimension to return prior/next although my preference would be to use attributes in that case.

Hope this helps and welcome to TM1.

-Andrew

The dimension index number has absolutely nothing to do with the parent child relationship of elements. It is simply the order of the dimension element in a list when the dimension was saved. When you create and save a dimension in TM1 (unless you used an XDI worksheet), the index numbers are automatically assigned either 1) in the order the element was added, or 2) alphabetically. It may or may not be in a parent-child order. Best to just forget about the index number except when using the DIMIX function in a TI process. For a rule, always use ELPAR or ELISANC, or create your own index number and store it in an attribute and reference it with ATTRN.

One area where the the index order is important, is when you expand a consolidation.
Then TM1 will show the immediate children based on the index.
One might want to change the index when this is important.
For example, Total Year has 12 children as the months. Then you don't want to have a random list of elements when you expand Total year in a view.

It is absolutely important, just not for what you're looking to do.

The benefit of the index numbers is that every element, regardless of how of how often it appears in a dimension, will have one identifying index number, which is very helpful if you're writing TI processes that edit your dimension structure or test for existing elements.