Essbase - How to determine if the dimension

Essbase - How to determine if the dimension must be of a type standard or attribute ?

Situation where attribute dimension fit the requirement

For simplicity, the examples in this topic show alternative arrangements for what initially was designed as two dimensions. You can apply the same logic to all combinations of dimensions.

Consider the design for a company that sells products to multiple customers over multiple markets; the markets are unique to each customer:

	Cust A	Cust B	Cust C
New York	100	N/A	N/A
Illinois	N/A	150	N/A
California	N/A	N/A	30

Cust A is only in New York, Cust B is only in Illinois, and Cust C is only in California. The company can define the data in one standard dimension:

Market
       New York
             Cust A
       Illinois
             Cust B
       California
             Cust C

However, if you look at a larger sampling of data, you may see that many customers can be in each market. Cust A and Cust E are in New York; Cust B, Cust M, and Cust P are in Illinois; Cust C and Cust F are in California. In this situation, the company typically defines the large dimension, Customer, as a standard dimension and the smaller dimension, Market, as an attribute dimension. The company associates the members of the Market dimension as attributes of the members of the Customer dimension. The members of the Market dimension describe locations of the customers.

Customer (Standard dimension)
       Cust A   (Attribute:New York)
       Cust B   (Attribute:Illinois)
       Cust C   (Attribute:California)
       Cust E   (Attribute:New York)
       Cust F   (Attribute:California)
       Cust M   (Attribute:Illinois)
       Cust P   (Attribute:Illinois)
Market (Attribute dimension)
       New York
       Illinois
       California

Situation where attribute dimension don't fit the requirement

Consider another situation. Again, the company sells products to multiple customers over multiple markets, but the company can ship to a customer that has locations in different markets:

           Cust A  Cust B  Cust C

| New York | 100 | 75 | N/A |

Illinois	N/A	150	N/A
California	150	N/A	30

Cust A is in New York and California. Cust B is in New York and Illinois. Cust C is only in California. Using an attribute dimension does not work in this situation;

A member cannot have more than one attribute member. Therefore, the company designs the data in two standard dimensions.

Customer
       Cust A
       Cust B
       Cust C
Market
       New York
       Illinois
       California