Calendarisation in FM

[cognos4321]

Hello experts,

"What is Calendarisation in FM"
Recently this question was asked to me in an interview and I was not able to answer appropriately.
I know about adding a Calendar prompt in Report Studio but what's CALENDARISATION and that too in FM. Couldn't find an answer on Google as well.

please guide

Thanks Always.

[MFGF]

Hello experts,

"What is Calendarisation in FM"
Recently this question was asked to me in an interview and I was not able to answer appropriately.
I know about adding a Calendar prompt in Report Studio but what's CALENDARISATION and that too in FM. Couldn't find an answer on Google as well.

please guide

Thanks Always.

Hi,

I was initially dubious that "calendarisation" was a real word, but it seems it's the act of calendarising something. Calendarising means " apportion (eg budget) to equal units of time (usually months) within a year" according to our friends at Collins.

I'd interpret this question as asking you about implementing a time dimension in Framework Manager. If you research that topic, you will find LOTS of good solutions :)

MF.

[cognos4321]

Ok thanks MF

[MFGF]

It sounds like a strange question to me - as it could be interpreted in different ways - or not even understood. I'm wondering if the interviewer worded it in that way deliberately - to see whether interviewees would challenge the question and ask for clarification - a skill often required when obtaining requirements from users :) I think if an interviewer asked me that question I'd laugh at him/her because it really does sound like a made-up word! I'd ask what sort of answerisation they wanted me to undertake :)

MF.

[cognos4321]

I answered "Is it about adding a time dimension to Framework Manager"
and they switched to some other question as if I was wrong and they want to move further in the interview process.

When I searched" Calendarisation in Framework Manager" on internet, I wasn't able to find anything.

Anyways, if the same question is asked to me by someone else I am going to answer about adding a time dimension to FM or a date prompt in Report Studio.

Thanks.

[bus_pass_man]

It was a trick question, the rotters.  I would like to think they were secretly hoping you'd come up with the FM analogue of something like 'African or European?' so that they would be able to welcome you into the club but I think they just wanted to use it as a screen.

There is no such object in the DMR universe called a time dimension.  That is, there is no distinct object type called a time dimension.  You only have measure dimensions and regular dimensions. 

You create the dimension which represents time as a regular dimension and add member sorting in addition to what appropriate data exists in your source database and what you have modeled in the dimension itself.  You are basically pretending that the dimension is a Time Dimension and making use of member relative functions ( tail, last, first child etc.).

That's done with member sorting. With member sorting you can use functions which assume that members are relative to each other in a timey-whimy way, such as this order.  The first child function would return January as the member in this case.

Year   Month key  Month
2016   201601      January
2016   201602      February
2016   201603      March

Without member sorting rules, members are generated in the order that their keys appear in the database.  If the records are not in the exact order that you want to use them as members, let's say as in the table below, the members would be generated in that order.  With member sorting you can impose sorting rules (including stuff like handling for fiscal weeks (for example was January 1 and 2 part of the last fiscal week of 2015, their own miniweek of 2016, or was December 27 to 31 part of the first fiscal week of 2016 (or even another FY which is not very closely following the calendar year).

Year   Month key  Month
2016   201602      February
2016   201601      January
2016   201603      March

[cognos4321]

Thanks for all the detailed valuable information, MF.
I really appreciate the time you spend to help others.

At first I was not able to understand what's member sorting. Now got it(if Iam right), its about member caption and business key we add while adding levels to the hierarchy in a regular dimension.

[cognos4321]

Thanks buss_pass_man.