As illustrated in Figure 62, Records and Fields, a data source comprises records, fields, and field delimiters.
A record is a structured row of related fields.
A field is an individual value.
A delimiter indicates that a field is complete and that the next character in the record starts another field.
Essbase reads data sources starting at the top and proceeding from left to right.
As illustrated in Figure 63, Kinds of Fields, data sources can contain dimension fields, member fields, member combination fields, and data fields.
Dimension fields identify the dimensions of the database, such as Market. Use dimension fields to tell Essbase the order of the dimensions in the data source. In Figure 63, Kinds of Fields, for example, the dimension fields are Market, Product, Year, Measures, and Scenario. Fields in the Market column, such as Texas, are members of the Market dimension, and fields in the Product column, such as 100-10, are members of the Product dimension. Although you can set dimension fields in the data source, usually you define dimension fields in the rules file.
Member fields identify the members or member combinations of the specified dimensions. Use member fields to tell Essbase to which members to map new data values, or which members to add to the outline. In Figure 63, Kinds of Fields, for example, Texas, 100-10, Jan, Sales, and Actual are member fields.
Data fields contain the numeric data values that are loaded into the intersections of the members of the database. Each data value must map to a dimension intersection. In Figure 63, Kinds of Fields, for example, 42 is the data value that corresponds to the intersection of Texas, 100-10, Jan, Sales, and Actual.
You can specify information in the header and in an individual record. In the following example, 100 is the data value that corresponds to the intersection of Jan, Actual, Cola, East, Sales, and 200 is the data value that corresponds to the intersection of Jan, Actual, Cola, West, Sales.
Jan, Actual Cola East Sales 100 Cola West Sales 200 Cola South Sales 300
Data fields are used only for data loading; dimension builds ignore data fields.
The following sections describe each item in a data source.