Time Dimension

[Pr07]

Hello All,

I would appreciate your help on handling Time Dimension for a given scenario. The analysis for a particular report is done on Day/Hour/15 minute segment basis. The incoming field is a Date column in oracle(of course we will bring this into IQD first).
How should the time dimension be defined and
Where should we deal with to handle this type of analysis:
* Database Level (my adding any calculated fields or exttra records)
* Impromptu
* Transformer
And more importantly, How?


Thanks in advance for all your help.

 

[nimmy99]

I think in Transformer. You can choose the wizard to create Time Dimension

 

[flex13]

You will have to create a manual time dimension for this as the wizard only goes down to the day level and not the hour or minutes slices that you desire.

 

[Pr07]

Thanks Flex13 for understanding my problem even though I could not put it clearly in my question.
I have a general idea of creating a separate Time table and linking it to source data. But I would like to hear about your version of 'How?'.
Another request: is there any books/white papers/websites where I can study about the transformations generally carried out on source data before bringing it into cube or for making it cube-ready(some sample case studies maybe).

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[BruceReed]

Cognos's PDF's are about all that exists, except for this web site. Too bad, as Cognos has a great software, but not so great "how-to"s.

See the PDF "Step-by-Step Transformer" page 85 or so for help on "set up a custom time dimension". READ that chapter in detail, as it goes into detail (but is a confusing read the first 4 times through.)

I assume that your date field has both dates, and hours in it or are they separate fields?

If they are one field, setup of one dimension in Transformer as "Date", broken out by year, month, day, hour.

If they are separate, you can merge them together or keep them separate. If you keep them apart, you can search by hours (maybe every 10:15am quality slips as the guys are drinking coffee) regardless of the dates.

a) Date would consist of the same as above
b) Date: year, month, day, Hour: Hour, quarter hour.
This is your choice on what you need to track.

Bruce

 

[shank007]

what is a return port, associated port? when do
> you use what?

 

[BruceReed]

Shank

Did you mean to post here? Seems out of place.

Bruce

 

[lmorgansky]

The easiest thing to do is:

1. Create a date dimension using the Date Wizard

2. Create a separate time dimension to hold the "time" part of the date. This part may have to be manual. It is easier to accomplish if you "time" part is in 24HH format.