Understanding Shared Member Retrieval During Drill-Down

Essbase retrieves shared members during drill-down, depending on their location in the spreadsheet. Essbase follows three rules during this type of retrieval:

Example of Shared Members from a Single Dimension

If you create a test dimension with all shared members based on the members of the dimension East from the Sample.Basic outline, the outline would be similar to the one shown in Figure 39, Shared Members from a Single Dimension:

Figure 39. Shared Members from a Single Dimension

This image shows an outline in which the test member consists of shared members from the East member. The test and East members contain the same siblings: New York, Massachusetts, Florida, Connecticut, and New Hampshire.

If you retrieve only the children of East, all results are from stored members because Essbase retrieves stored members by default.

If, however, you retrieve data with the children of test above it in the spreadsheet, Essbase retrieves the shared members:

New York
Massachusetts
Florida
Connecticut
New Hampshire
test

If you move test above its last two children, Essbase retrieves the first three children as shared members, but the last two as stored members. Similarly, if you insert a member in the middle of the list above which was not a sibling of the shared members (for example, California inserted between Florida and Connecticut), Essbase retrieves shared members only between the nonsibling and the parent (in this case, between California and test).

Example of Retrieval with Crossed Generation Shared Members

You can modify the Sample.Basic outline to create a shared member whose stored member counterpart is a sibling to its own parent, as shown in Figure 40, Retrieval with Crossed Generation Shared Members:

Figure 40. Retrieval with Crossed Generation Shared Members

This image shows an outline in which the test member consists of siblings that are shared members from the East member (New York, Massachusetts, Florida, Connecticut, and New Hampshire) and a shared member, west, whose stored member counterpart (West) is a sibling to its own parent (test).

If you create a spreadsheet with shared members in this order, Essbase retrieves all the shared members, except it retrieves the stored member West, not the shared member west:

West
New York
Massachusetts
Connecticut
New Hampshire
test

Essbase retrieves the members in this order because test is a parent of west and a sibling of west’s stored member counterpart, West.