..calculation options

Hi again,

There is a really interesting topic that I believe the majority of the administrators and users are confused with. What calculation option to select when they are working on a grid or a form.

The available options are Calculate, Force Calculate, Translate, Force Translate, Calculate Contribution, Force Calculate Contribution, Consolidate, Consolidate all with data and Consolidate all.

Analysis:

• The first option available in every entity is the Calculate option. This option will run all the calculation rules for the active scenario, year, period, entity and value (not all the value members!). Any periods before the active one will be also calculated. In order to trigger the Calculate option, the status of the entity should be CH or CH ND. If the status of the entity is OK then the available option will be the Force Calculate. Based on this, the system will not calculate an entity if it has been already calculated except if you deliberately click Force Calculate.

• The next option is in every entity is the Translate option.This option will run all the translation rules in order to convert the values from the local currency to parent currency or any other selected Value dimension member. In order to run the Translate option, the value dimension member should either be any of the Parent currency members or any other currency excluding the local currency. The Translate and the Force Translate options have similar functionality as the Calculate and the Force Calculate.

• The next option is the Calculate Contribution option. This option will run the calculation rules, the translation rules and the consolidation rules on a specific node (parent.entity). So, if you are in an entity with status CH and you select the Calculate Contribution, the system will run the calculation rules, the translation rules and finally will populate the value member [Proportion] and [Elimination] based on the consolidation rules. However, this rule will not affect the parent entity.

• Finally, there are the options Consolidate, Consolidate all with data and Consolidate all. The Consolidate option runs only on parent entity. This option will aggregate the data from [Contribution] value member of the base entity and it will populate the member of the specific parent entity. If the calculation status of the base entity at [Contribution] value member is OK then the Consolidate option will not run the calculation or translation rules. If the status of the base entity is not CH or TR, the Consolidate option will run either the calculation and/or the translation rules on the base entity. If the child of the specific parent entity is another parent, the Consolidate command will also consolidate the child parent entity if the status is CN.

• On the other hand, the Consolidate all with data option will trigger the Calculate Contribution option in every entity that has data regardless the status of the base entity. If the child of the specific parent entity is another parent, the Consolidate command will also consolidate the child parent entity regardless the status.

• Finally, the Consolidate all option will trigger the Calculate Contribution or Consolidate command in every entity of the specific hierarchy. This is the reason why your database is bigger when you use the Consolidate all option. The system will run the rules in entities that have no data and the database size will increase with zeros. A way to fix this is to write rules that are not triggered if there are no data. 

Based on all the above... I prefer to use the calculate contribution when I work on a base entity and either the Consolidate or the Consolidate all with data when I work on a parent entity... The Consolidate all is only for extreme unique cases.
I hope that the above make sense..
 
As usual... please write any thoughts that you have in mind...

Thanos