Strategy ONE

Attribute Validation

Attribute Validation is an advanced VLDB property that is hidden by default. For information on how to display this property, see Viewing and Changing Advanced VLDB Properties.

Attributes are available for dynamic sourcing by default, but there are some data modeling conventions that should be considered when using dynamic sourcing.

In general, if attributes use outer joins accurate data can be returned to reports from Intelligent Cubes through dynamic sourcing. However, if attributes use inner joins, which is a more common join type, you should verify that the attribute data can be correctly represented through dynamic sourcing.

Two scenarios can cause attributes that use inner joins to return incorrect data when dynamic sourcing is used:

  • Attribute information in lookup and fact tables includes NULL values.
  • All attribute elements in fact tables are not also present in lookup tables.

You can enable and disable dynamic sourcing for attributes by modifying the Attribute Validation VLDB property. This VLDB property has the following options:

  • Attribute columns in fact tables and lookup tables do not contain NULLs and all attribute elements in fact tables are present in lookup tables (default): This option enables attributes for dynamic sourcing.
  • Attribute columns in fact tables and lookup tables may contain NULLs and/or some attribute elements in fact tables are not present in lookup tables: This option disables dynamic sourcing for attributes. This setting should be used if your attribute data is not modeled to support dynamic sourcing. The inclusion of NULLs in your attribute data or a mismatch between available attribute data in your fact and lookup tables can cause incorrect data to be returned to reports from Intelligent Cubes through dynamic sourcing.

You can disable dynamic sourcing for attributes individually or you can disable dynamic sourcing for all attributes within a project. While the definition of the VLDB property at the project level defines a default for all attributes in the project, any modifications at the attribute level take precedence over the project level definition. For information on defining a project-wide dynamic sourcing strategy, see the In-memory Analytics Help.

Levels at Which You Can Set This

Project and attribute