Dimensions

Dimensions represent the core components of an application such as periods, schedules, units, and products. Dimensions are static in most relational database applications. Once you establish the database dimensions, they rarely change over the life of the application. The names of the dimensions used in this guide are not required. You can name them according to your needs.

These are the three types of dimensions:

• Flat
• Hierarchical
• Schedule. Schedule dimensions are a special case of a hierarchical dimension.

Before you build your database, you must know what you want your application to handle and what dimensions are necessary to achieve this. There are eleven dimension types. Nine of these are required dimensions (Category and Other are optional). You can define additional dimensions as required by your application.

Although we mention specific dimension and member names throughout the documentation, you can use any name you want. For example, we refer to the Schedule dimension but you can name this the Account dimension.

When using these members, use the All members below option. Do not include the Self option.

• Schedule.Master
• Merged Period Year
• Period
• Year

There are some reserved words and special characters that you should not use in your member or dimension names. See "Member name" in the Infor CPM Architect User Guide.