Custom Group and Consolidation Comparison

Both consolidations and custom groups provide flexibility in reports, but the objects differ in their structure and use. The essential distinction is that consolidations work with attributes and custom groups use filters. Consolidations are groupings of attribute elements while custom groups are based on filter criteria. Custom groups are used to apply different filters to different rows of a report. Consolidations are used to create virtual attributes to allow reporting on attributes that do not exist in the data model. Finally, row level math can be performed with consolidations but not with custom groups.

Custom groups are more flexible than consolidations because you do not have to know much about your data to create filters for a custom group. In contrast, consolidations require that you know exactly which attribute elements to select when creating the consolidation. To continue with the examples from the previous sections, you create filters for the Store Inventory custom group, to group small stores with low inventory and large stores with low inventory. For the Seasons consolidations, you need to know the months that make up a season.

The following table outlines other differences between custom groups and consolidations. More information on each section follows the table.

Feature or Action	Custom Group	Consolidation
Arithmetic operations (row level math)	Not allowed	Allowed
Where and how data is calculated	Warehouse	Analytical Engine
SQL efficiency	Low	High
Re-using consolidation elements	No	Yes
Hierarchical display	Flexible and expandable	Fixed at element level only
Subtotals	Yes	Yes