Entity with many levels - suggestions

Samir Jones

Hello,

We have a new customer that has an Account dimension with nine levels (!).

It's an Unbalanced Hierarchy.

Before we start to build too many objects depended on the Account entity/entities, we would like to ask this creative Community for input and knowledge sharing.

This object(s) should fulfill our need of:
- Loading data
- Visualizing data
- Drill (Anywhere and eventually Through)
- In some reports have a flat P&L on top, and hopefully be able to drill to lower levels
- Use Templates/Format to do some cosmetics
- Will probably need to use Rules - at least in the flat P&L.

As we see it, there are two main options here.

1. Create an Unbalanced Hierarchy.
   Though, not sure of how the flat P&L on top would affect this.
2. Create nine Entities in a Relationship, with some fake members to fill the unbalanced portion.
   In the Data View, enable "Show groups as unbalanced hierarchy" (see screenshot below).

What are your suggestions, experience, pro's and con's?

PS. We also have an Organizational dimension (starts with cost center) with eleven levels (!).

Thank you!

Krisztina Zappert

CON to having such a huge unbalanced hierarchy: every time it is used in a cube, all the members will be counted towards the sparsity. It feels like opening tuples could become impossibly long easily.

Holly Rieke

@Samir Jones Just a note to let you know that I'm moving this discussion to the 'Platform Forum' for better visibility and alignment with Board platform-related questions.

Nico Gerbrand

I suggest to use Unbalanced Hierarchy for a quick start. If you encounter problems later it's not difficult to add more entities for your second approach.