VARYING ATTRIBUTES IN ESSBASE

VARYING ATTRIBUTES

Though Varying Attributes feature is launched in 11.1.x version and is not new to Essbase,
I have seen, still this is new to many. The reason for my new post about Varying Attributes is to explain in detail about Varying Attributes features with examples. 

Varying Attributes Overview

A product typically has attributes that describe or define the product. 
For example, a product could have an attribute describing the size of the product in liters and an attribute describing the flavor of the product. 
In such a scenario, Product would be a base dimension while Liters and Flavor would be attribute dimensions.

An enhancement to Attribute Dimensions starting from version 11.1.x gives us more 
flexibility by without the necessity of creating new stored members or even a new dimension, and thus affecting the database size in a negative way. 
This new option is called Varying Attributes.

As an example, consider this scenario:

Cool drink with 200 ml is newly launched in the last quarter of the year. Sales of cool drinks in the last six months are as follows:

Varying Attributes example: newly launched cool drink in 200 ml

Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb
Coke500ml	Coke500ml	Coke500ml	ThumsUp200ml	ThumsUp200ml	ThumsUp200ml

In this example, cool drink with 200 ml is Varying attribute. Data retrievals show that cool drink sold in Sep, Oct and Nov months total of 1500 ml of quantity and from Dec, Jan and Feb the cold drinks sold for 3 months are 600 ml. Without using Varying Attribute, the total quantity in liters would  be 2.1lts

In order to create varying attributes (assuming, that the other standard dimensions, like Product and Time, already exist), a common Attribute Dimension with its members needs to be created in the outline.