need clarification on Characteristic Relationship in Integrated planning

[Former Member]

Hi experts,

i need clarification on charactristic Relationship.

i have one example given below.

mater data:

custid cust_group

11111 sales

22222 marketing

33333 sales

44444 retl

55555 retl

66666 marketing

and info cube data:

cid costcenter region 0calyear amount quantity 0unit 0currency

11111 AAAAA NORTH 2001 1000 25 KG INR

22222 BBBBB SOUTH 2002 20000 40 KG INR

33333 CCCCC WEST 2003 13000 40 KG INR

44444 DDDDD EAST 2004 34562 10 KG INR

55555 EEEEE NORTH 2001 76549 36 KG INR

66666 FFFFF SOUTH 2002 13245 32 KG INR

and in infocube datamodel i inserted cust_group which is attributre of custid in region dimension.

can any one explain the diffenece between the output when using

1. without using characteristic relationship.

2.without derivation (for characteristic relationship)

3.with derivation (for characteristic relationship)

.

any help will be great help for me.

Thanks in advance.

Reshma.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

When you add cust_group to the cube in any dimention,

1. you can fill this new field in the cube with out using this in planning levels, using char. relationship with derivation. In this case, you just derive the cust_group value based on custid from master data using char.relationship of type derivation with master data attributes. In this case, planning level contains custid but not cust_group.

2. When you use both custid and cust_group in the planning levels, queries/input layouts, using char.relationship of type without derivation (using combination check and proposal), you can provide only valid combinations of custid and cust_group based on master data in the input ready query/ layouts.

3. If you dont use char. relationship at all, you can provide any combination of custid and cust_group and plan, system will not check if this combination is maintained in the master data or not ( valid or invalid).