Changes in xdi dimension worksheets

[RCO]

I'm experiencing something I consider a bit unusual with xdi dimension worksheets.
I have a dimension called company.xdi and quite randomly, changes made in the worksheet are not reflected in the server.
I have;
* Restarted the server/service instance
* Logged out/on from a session
* Restarted my local machine (I'm an Admin)
* Had a look at the logs and I could see the server is registering accordignly "13-09-09 16:22:07.451 TM1.Dimension Dimension company changed by user 555"
* Also had a look at what seams to be the problem as per the IBM website
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.w ... wg21601211

I did download the Microsoft Process Monitor and run it. I could see the "No Such File" error/event type; however to solve the problem your are supposed to assigning appropriate write permissions to the path set in "Default file location" which it doesn't seam to take any effect.

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Am I missing something here? Has anyone experienced this random behaviour with xdi dims?

Any ideas are greatly appreciated....

[Alan Kirk]

I'm experiencing something I consider a bit unusual with xdi dimension worksheets.
I have a dimension called company.xdi and quite randomly, changes made in the worksheet are not reflected in the server.

In my experience that's normally the result of you not being connected at the time, such as a connection timeout.

I have;
* Restarted the server/service instance
* Logged out/on from a session
* Restarted my local machine (I'm an Admin)

It's not clear from that whether you're running this on your own machine or not. If you have the database in your Program Files directory (where IBM still installs them despite me raising this as an issue years ago), make sure that you aren't being bitten by this issue.

The Excel default file location shouldn't be where the .xdis are saved anyway; it should be in the data directory specified in your TM1 Options. In any case, saving them into your personal Documents library would be bad voodoo. They should be in a folder on the server; if not the actual server data directory, certainly one close to it.

[RCO]

Thank you Alan for your comments,

I was/am without a doubt connected to the server. I have run this on my local machine, another user's machine and even directly from the server, I have also tried to save changes connected as the "Admin" tm1 user and no luck.

In terms of the program files directory it is all in good order (thanks for sharing that post thought) also my data directory in my TM1 options is pointing to the right folder in the server where all the xdi files are saved I have nothing saved in my documents library.

I can't really think about what else is causing the issue...

[macsir]

Did you use Dim Save in company.xdi to the server?

[RCO]

Yes I absolutely did, Dim open and Dim save...

[Michel Zijlema]

A situation where I've seen the .xdi save fail silently is when you've added an element to the dimension that is identical to an alias value of another element in the dimension.
Could this be the case in your situation?

Michel

[RCO]

Hi Michael,

I have come across this issue and as you mention the .xdi file save fails silently, fortunately the logs actually record this type of events/errors.

TM1 log

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However in this occasion I can't see any errors being logged..

Tm1 log2

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It is just really weird I must say, and to this point I am not being able to save changes e.i trying to add and element Test12345 which is clearly not part of the dimensions nor is an alias-attribute.

[jstrygner]

When your .xdi upload fails, are you able to make such dimension modification using Dimension Editor?
Maybe your dimension is just locked/reserved at the time when you want to perform your task (right-click on dimension and look what is available under Security item)?

[RCO]

Hi jstrygner,

Yes I could make changes directly in the dimension editor; the dimension is not locked nor reserved.
If I do this I will have a sync issue and unfortunately I can't export the dimension to a new .xdi file given that the current file has more information which the power users need to keep.
I probably won't have any other option but to do it, however the reason why this is happening is still unknown...

[RCO]

Ok I think I found what the problem is;

When saving the dimension via “Dimension Save” in the worksheet , TM1 creates a temporary file called (in my case) company.dix (not .xdi) once the changes are committed this file should be removed/deleted, again is a temporary file.
When I had a look at the actual files in the data directory, I found this file company.dix with a creation date of 4 days ago which is when I started having issues.
So I manually deleted the company.dix file from the data directory in the server, went to perspectives then “Dimension open”, created again the Test12345 element, “Dimension Save” and the new element was reflected in the server explorer when browsing the dimension.
I would think the .dix file was somehow blocking a new temporary file and therefore no changes were reflected in the server.

As for the why or how the company.dix file got saved in the data directory...I have no idea but I hope this helps anyone having a similar issue.

Cheers..