Preparing source system data

For each separate functional area that you intend to import, you must extract and transform your source system data into staging tables. It is recommended that you import all data at once.

The integration stored procedures include placeholders where you can insert your custom scripts that perform the extraction from a source system. Custom scripts can also be run independently after the staging tables have been populated.

Some data areas are more complicated than others and use staging tables that are validated and transformed by the stored procedures. The staging tables are then copied into the set of dimension or cube data tables that can be imported.

Other data areas are lists of dimension elements, so the integration scripts provide only the set of dimension or cube data tables that can be imported from directly. The dimension tables have these suffixes:

• _ELEMENTS
• _PARENTS
• _HIERARCHIES
• _ATTRIBUTES

Often only the _ELEMENTS and _PARENTS tables are needed. Because no initial validation occurs for these tables, you must provide data exactly as it is defined in Infor EPM. For example, columns that specify other elements of dimensions must be valid existing element names without leading or trailing blank spaces.

These dimensions, which are delivered as part of the application, are used in the import process:

• BPDACCOUNT
• BPDCYCLE
• BPDVERSION
• BPDENTITY
• BPDORGANIZATION
• BPDLEVEL
• BPDLANGUAGE
• BPDSTEP
• BPDPARAMETER
• BPDCURRENCY

All elements in those dimensions that are used in the staging tables must also exist.