Components of a data mart

Dimensions

The data mart stores data in many different dimensions, which are simply groups or categories that organize the data. For example, a data mart might have dimensions such as organizational divisions, products, budget amounts, fiscal years, and periods. These dimensions enable you to look at the data from different views, selecting only the information that is important to you at the time.

For example, you might want to see how a product is selling in all divisions and how it compares to budget. Or you might want to compare each region for variance of actuals to budget by month. With a click or drag of the mouse, you can rearrange the data for different reports or analysis.

Members

A member is a specific component of the dimension. Members act as filters, letting you narrow down the focus of dimension. For example, the fiscal years dimension might be made up of two members: 1999 and 2000. You can define a member for the organization dimension to narrow it down to a single company or a single division (accounting unit). You can use members to select the specific data that you want to include in your analysis.

Assign a member name to a member to make the data selection process more intuitive for users. For example, you might call the Level 1 member Region and the Level 2 member Division to represent more specifically how your organization is structured. Data will be organized in an outline (hierarchical structure) based on the member names you assign.

Data mart type

Analytic Architect comes with predefined, subject-specific sets of templates called data mart types. You can use these templates when you define a data mart to specify what data from the relational database that you want to use. The data mart type contains dimensions and members, but it contains no data.

The combination of the predefined data mart type and the definition you add to a data mart instructs Analytic Architect to retrieve the appropriate data from your relational database and transform it into an outline of dimensions with their members. To use the data mart you have defined, you must use Analytic Architect to load the data from the relational database as well as the outline that you have defined.

The data mart type defines the programs that supply outline and data values information to the Analytic Architect application. Lawson delivers pre-defined data mart types that can be used to define data marts that contain your OLAP data. You can modify selection criteria for the pre-defined dimensions. Lawson delivers these data mart types:

• Activity

• Asset Management

• Case Carts

• Compensation

• Daily Reporting

• Financial

• Headcount and Turnover

• Lease Management

• Purchasing

• Retail Metric

• Sales Performance

• Strategic Ledger

• Production Order

Strategic Ledger data mart dimensions and members

Specifically, the Strategic Ledger data mart includes four dimensions:

• Strategic Ledger Dimension Group (required)

• Years (required)

• Scenarios (optional)

• Type (optional)

You must define members for each dimension you include in the data mart.

See Defining Strategic Ledger data mart dimensions.