Purpose of reference period (0REFPER) and year in BCS?

[Former Member]

Hi Everyone,

What is the purpose / benefit of using 0refper when reporting?

We have been testing some scenarios today and cannot see any beneficial use:

We loaded RFD (PL00) for periods 0-9

We loaded to the reporting cube (NB we run reports on a reporting cube NOT the BCS transactional cube)

Upon loading to the reporting cube, Consolidation group is populated for all records

We changed the hierarchy for period 6

We loaded again to the reporting cube

The Consolidation group changed for records from period 6 onwards

We loaded some Intercompany postings in p6 and ran eliminations

We loaded to the reporting cube

Upon loading to the reporting cube, Consolidation group is populated for all records

We changed the hierarchy in p6

We loaded again to the reporting cube

The consolidation group changed for records from period 6 onwards

These results were regardless of the value of 0refper

Therefore my question is does 0refper only provide a snapshot of data ata certain time?

eg if we repeated the scenario above and loaded with 0refper = 9, we would have the original Consolidation groups

then if we changed the hierarchies for any period (eg 6) and loaded with 0refper = 10, we would have the new consolidation groups.

If this is correct, what is the benfit of this functionality?

[dan_sullivan · Accepted solution]

It is my understanding that the 0refper is factored into reporting with BCS virtual infocube. It may not be applicable for BCS datamarting.

The reference period/year feature allows for reporting for a certain timeframe using a hierarchy of another timeframe. In other words, you could report on the p9 balances with the p6 hierarchy for comparison purposes, if needed, or the p6 balances with the p9 hierarchy if needed.

The virtual infocube logic looks at the hierarchy for the reference period/year to determine the relevant posting level 20 and 30 records for the cons group selected in the query.

When BCS datamart is used, the virtual InfoCube logic is only applied during the population of the datamart in order to assign the correct cons group for each record.

The only alternatives I can think of is to have an alternative datamart or report from the BCS virtual infocube.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the response Dan, we understood the same but we've tested this numerous times and we are not getting this result - the use of different 0refper values doesn't seem to change our results!

We did some testing in our development system.

with datamart

We loaded RFD (posting level 00) from the transaction cube to the reporting cube, with reporting mode S, this picked up the hierarchies as per the posting period of the transactions in BCS.

We then changed the hierarchy and reloaded the reporting cube.

The data records picked up the new hierarchy as per the posting period in BCS (regardless of our choice of 0refper value).

We repeated the above with intercompany eliminations (posting level 20) and had the same outcome.

it appears that 0refper is irrelevant when looking up the hierarchy, it does not make a difference to any of our results.

- unless the 0refper is to be used as a 'snapshot' of the hierarchies at the time we loaded to the reporting cube?

with virtual cube

When we run queries on the virtual cube with any value of 0refper and 0refyear, we get the same results, 0refper is irrelevant.

We've found OSS 1148787 but haven't yet implemented it, it doesn't give a clear indication of the symptoms.

has anyone experience of using 0refper successfully?

[dan_sullivan · Accepted solution]

When executing query using virtual infocube it is important to choose reporting mode restatement. Have you tried this?

I have successfully used )refper but it has been some time ago with release 4.0.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Dan, we had missed the 0repmode=R.