This just came in from a consultant...
I'll post the answer next...

I’ve had a query from [customer] that I don’t think can be cater for by using PMF and just wanted your input before I respond to [customer].

They have a hierarchy that looks as follows (I’ve simplified it as it contains more levels):


TEAM GROUPA GROUPB GROUPC

teama groupa borougha dira
teamb groupa borougha dira
teamc groupb borougha dira

Etc ... Always 1 to 1 relationship in most cases but they also have the following teams in the same hierarchy structure

TEAM GROUPA GROUPB GROUPC
teamx groupx ALL GROUPS dirb
teamz ALL GROUPS ......

For instance they might have a group that covers all groups within a certain area so its information/data would need to be spread over all groups... Or they might have an admin team that covers ALL GROUPA, ALL GROUPB and ALL GROUPC .... The KEY that joins the HIERARCHY to MEASURE DATA is GROUP_KEY which is unique with each group...

Can this be done via DIMENSIONS within PMF ?

If we understand what you are trying to do, it’s to have a low level of the hierarchy somehow show data across all of the organization.



This would not be a problem to link up to measure data provided the keys attached to this data are unique and not re-used elsewhere. You’d have a separate bucket in your load data that aggregated the data you needed and then you could load it into PMF under that key. If such data were not already aggregated and keyed up in the data source, you might need an intermediate file (a HOLD file or a more complex ODS) to source the aggregated data.



Caveat: A hierarchy is assumed to exclude data narrower and narrower as you descend, and include data wider and wider as you ascend… and PMF is designed that way. So if customer expected that the higher levels of the hierarchy that contains those “all” aggregated levels must somehow not include all that aggregate data, that would be a very hard to solve problem. In PMF hierarchical aggregation is isomorphic – meaning everything at the bottom contributes to the top and everything at the top can be revealed in the details at the bottom. If different behavior is expected then let me know… we would have hit a difficult situation.