Having built several PMF systems, I’m sharing some of the techniques that I have used to diagnose and resolve load errors.

Load errors usually appear when using the "preview" button on a measure load, the following error message will be displayed:

Error generating Measures
The following error was encountered:

Error Summary: Problem running mapped field DEFINEs during data extract
Trace Message: Error S07_B2 FOCERRNUM: 36346 ,
_____________

The above error is usually due to a datatype mismatch between the dimensional key from the dimensional data source and the dimensional key from the measure data source. Basically FOCUS is having a problem joining the two keys.

PMF is very finicky with datatypes when loading. To diagnose and resolve load errors:

1) Right click on the error message and view source. At the bottom of the view source should be a description of the error message and a little more information.

2) View the sample data for your dimension and your measure – is one left justified and the other right justified? If you are using excel as a source file, try changing the fields to character, even if the field is numbers. Do you see extra leading zeros? All of these all will cause data mismatch problems.

3) Go to the metadata (master file .mas) for the dimension and the measure. Check to see if the key fields have the same datatypes. If one is A10, the other should be A10. Field length should be the same. Keep in mind that PMF will be using this field to create a hash key index – so for performance shorter length is better when designing your keys. Note: Often when you create synonyms the defaults data types do not align for these fields. Trying using variable length (like A10V), as this format is slightly more forgiving.

4) Data sources that use variable length fields are often created as a fixed length field by default in the master file. Variable length fields may have unapparent blanks buried in the data. Use trim, or some sort of substring function to get rid of leading and ending zeros. Or better yet, change the datatype and mask on the data source. Again, you can try using the FOCUS variable length (like A10V) field in the master file, as this format is slightly more forgiving.

5) Sometimes a mismatch is caused by the dimension keys having different numbers of characters in the KEY field. PMF (via WebFOCUS) may be unable to join the KEY fields if not all of the characters in the field were used. Therefore if you have an A5 field, then you need to fill all 5 characters in the field. Hence if your KEY field was 'A1', the loader would mismatch. But a key that was 'A1xxx' or 'A1___' would succeed.

6) Custom time dimensions: PMF is looking for a very specific format for the key: HYYMD Design your custom date key in this format – or you will probably have a problem loading and have to rebuild your key!!! I am on PMF v5.11 which has 3 levels in the time dimension; version 5.13 has more time levels, so this format may change. Look at the format on MEASURE_DATE on the measure load to verify the TIME_KEY format.

Still having issues loading a custom time? Use the code button "MEASURE_DATE/HYYMDs=HINPUT(8, TIME_KEY, 8, 'HYYMDs'); (Assuming a SQL mask of YYYYMMDD like 20090501 for May 1, 2009). Also in the masterfile TIME_KEY must be USAGE=A8, TIME_LEVEL01_VALUE = A4, TIME_LEVEL02_VALUE = A2, TIME_LEVEL03_VALUE = A2.

7) Avoid reserve characters (& ; = - etc) in the name of your measures as this can also cause the loader to choke. Also avoid NULL fields in the data or field name.

8) Diagnosing: When all else fails, create a .fex that joins the dimension and measure keys. This is a simple test to see if the join will work – and you may get some insight from the error message if it fails.


Anyone else have other techniques that they want to share?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: SethW,

Seth, thanks for this information. It's very valuable!

If you recieve the following errow when setting up an objective or measure:

Error in PMF program: A problem occured: *** Fatal program error while attempting to create the Objective
If this problem happens again, please contact your PMF Administrator Error Details: Error S01_A in pmf_objectives_form_update, FOCERRNUM: 282 INPUT: 0


It means that the text you entered for the description, Measure Formula, or Subjective Comments fields are too long.

The size limit is 1024 bytes *but* you should get a better error message than that.

We'll test and confirm this behavior and if confirmed we'll address it as a bug.

Also note; It could be specific to Oracle, since that is what you're using, so we'll make sure to confirm it on Oracle.

thanks!