Entity with many levels - suggestions

Samir Jones
Samir Jones Active Partner
100 Up Votes 25 Likes Second Anniversary 10 Comments
edited June 2023 in Platform

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!

Answers

  • Krisztina Zappert
    Krisztina Zappert Active Partner
    Second Anniversary 25 Likes 25 Up Votes 10 Comments

    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
    Holly Rieke Employee
    100 Likes 10 Comments New Community Member DACH
    admin

    @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.

  • 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.