TM1 lint

admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:12:59 +0000

TM1 lint

alias.pl is a very basic lint tool whose task is to flag "dangerous" TM1 rules.
For now it is only checking for aliases in rules.

Indeed, if an alias is changed or deleted, any rule based on that alias will stop working without any warning from the system. The values will remain in place until the cube or its rules gets reloaded but you will only get a "silent" warning in the messages log after reloading the cube.

How to proceed:
.configure and execute the following TI process (to put in prolog), this will generate a list of all cubes and associated dimensions, and a dictionary of all aliases on the system in .csv format

### PROLOG
#configure the 2 lines below for your system
report = 'D:\alias.dictionary.csv';
report1 = 'D:\cubes.csv';

#
##############################################

#it is assumed that none of the aliases contain commas
DataSourceASCIIQuoteCharacter = '';


######create a list of all cubes and associated dimensions
c = 1;
while(c <= DimSiz('}Cubes'));
    cube = DIMNM('}Cubes',c);
    
    d = 1;
    while(tabdim(cube,d) @<> '');
         asciioutput(report1, cube, tabdim(cube, d));
         d = d + 1;
    end;
    c = c + 1;
end;


######create a dictionary of all aliases
d = 1;
while(d <= DimSiz('}Dimensions'));
  dim = DIMNM('}Dimensions',d);

  #skip control dimensions
  If(SUBST(dim,1,1) @<> '}');
      attributes = '}ElementAttributes_' | dim;
      #any aliases?
      If(DIMIX('}Dimensions',attributes) <> 0);
          a = 1;
          while(a <= DimSiz(attributes));
              attr = DIMNM(attributes,a);

              #is it an alias?
              If(DTYPE(attributes,attr) @= 'AA');
                  #go through all elements and report the ones different from the principal name
                  e = 1;
                  while(e <= DimSiz(dim));
                          element = DIMNM(dim,e);

                          If(element @<> ATTRS(dim,element,attr) & ATTRS(dim,element,attr) @<> '');
                               asciioutput(report,dim,attr,ATTRS(dim,element,attr));
                          Endif;
                          e = e + 1;
                  end;
              Endif;
              a = a + 1;
          end;
      Endif;
  Endif;
  d = d + 1;
end;

.configure and execute the perl script attached below
that script will load the csv files generated earlier in hash tables, scan all rules files and finally report any aliases.

If the element is ambiguous because it is present in 2 different dimensions then you should write it as dimension:'element' instead of using aliases (e.g. write Account:'71010' instead of '71010').

admin Tue, 2010-09-07 13:12

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Renaming elements

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:05:27 +0000

Renaming elements

Renaming elements without activating aliases? Yes we can!
The dimension editor and dimension worksheets cannot rename elements directly, so let me introduce you to SwapAliasWithPrincipalName.

In this example, we will add a padding "0" to an existing set of elements without rebuilding the dimension from scratch.

Before swap:

Create a new alias "new" in the Dimension, by default the new elements are identical
Change all required elements to their new names in that alias. Below we pad a zero in front of all elements

Now create a new TI with the following line in the Prolog Tab:

SwapAliasWithPrincipalName(Dimension,'new',0);

The third parameter needs to be zero to execute the swap. If you know if it has any purpose, please leave a comment to enlighten us.

After swap:

And the "old" elements have become the "new" alias:

/!\Make sure the associated dimension worksheet is also updated if there is one!!!

This was tested successfully under v. 9.0.3 and v. 9.4.
This TI function is listed in the TM1 documentation, however there is no description of its function and syntax.

Click on the RTFM FAIL tag to find out some other poorly documented or simply undocumented TM1 functions.

admin Thu, 2010-09-02 12:05