What is the best, fastest, most efficient way to load approximately 800 measures into PMF database without having to enter one measure at a time first?

800 Measures? That's a lot but not enough to overwhelm PMF.

First question. Sometimes people say "Measure" for different things in their minds. Are these really individual Measures (COGS, Margins, Profit) or are they individual Dimensional intersections (COGS for Chicago, COGS for LA, Profit for Chicago, Profit for LA), or are they rows of data for a measure (COGS for Chicago for Jan 2011 for Digital products, etc...)?

Second question. Where is the metadata for the measures stored as you see them:
* Measure Name
* Measure Type (we can assume all "loaded" measures)
* Dimensions to which to link each Measure
* Directionality
* Tolerances
* Load information
* Etc.

E.g., the stuff you'd see in the Measure panel and its related panels in PMF. For this I think you should provide an example of where this material is in the external system and what format it is in.

thanks

Bob,

First question's answer: each of these "measures" is one unique individual measure. They are not a measure's "occurance" or "instances", with different "flavor/dimension" (such as COGS grouped by organization, or by time, or location dimension).

Second question's answer: Some of the metadata for the external system's measures are stored in several SQL tables, all of which can be exported into Excel files to be loaded into PMF.

Example of an external measure: Average property code's case duration. This measure has actual and target data, but does not have other metadata information such as measure type (loadable or user entered), unit, target load type (from field or fixed value), display format, etc.

This would be the scenario for most of the other external measures (lacking of some of the metadata required by PMF).

Hope these answers provide enough information for you to see if a volume of different measures can be loaded into PMF directly without having to be created (and data entered) one by one.

Thank you.

Let's be clear, PMF doesn't have a way to do this today, and this is a function that by needs would be done rarely and typically when transferring over from an existing set of other systems. So please consider this a set of questions intended to see if it's possible for us to design something to enable this.

The fact that some of the metadata would not be present in the external data was to be expected, however the question then is how the data would be "enriched" on the way into PMF to enable that information to be set up. Without that information of items such as direction, etc., you wouldn't have Measures.

Which of the data in my list is present in your specific case?

Is the measure name present in the data that's inbound, or does it come over as part of the metadata (e.g., a TITLE in a WebFOCUS master file)?

We need to get precise answers to these questions... Also if you want you can upload your sample Measure data to us. Email the samples to bob_ferrante@ibi.com so I can have a look at them.

thanks

Bob,

I am clear now, :-). Thank you for the very fast response. I will gather the data you ask for and will send you a sample file in email.

Thanks again.