Text Measures Overview and Workflow

Text measures extend the analytical capabilities of Essbase beyond numerical data to text-based content. Storage and analysis of textual content can be useful when a cell needs to have one of a finite list of textual values; for example, a product may be sold in five different colors. The color is a text measure whose value must be one of those five colors. Any color not represented in the finite list would be considered by Essbase to be out of range.

You create text measures at the database level. Text measures are made possible by your mapping of a set of text strings to corresponding numeric IDs. These mappings are contained in database-level text list objects that you create.

Use the following workflow to enable and use text measures:

  1. In the outline properties, enable typed measures.

  2. Create a text list object to store the available text values and map each text value to an ordinal number, so that Essbase can work with the text values. Optionally, map Missing and Out of Range to ordinal numbers.

    Note:

    Each numeric value can have only one text value mapped to it.

  3. Create a text measure in the outline (in the Accounts dimension), and in the member properties:

    1. Define it as type Text.

    2. Associate it with the text list object.

See Performing Database Operations on Text and Date Measures.