Dimensions, and the translator export to Excel.

Jim Clendon

This is not a bug report.  it is just some additional guidence for using translators, which are a valuable and powerful tool, but one that can bite with unexpected results.  I have learnt through being bitten as I do a reasonable amount of publising models using Excel.  I noticed an inconsistency in naming dimensioned object when my vlookups did not work for dimensioned objects.  While this was easy enough to find and rectify it took a while to realise that it could also result in apparent duplicate records in ProVision IF the file was re-used as a translator import (and I had been caught by this once or twice).

 

In my Excel workbook produced by the translator exporter I have a worksheet called Parent-Child Link, and another called Capability.  I use vlookup to find and add the relevant capability parent object.

• On the capability sheet the capability name in the name column I have 2 entries with a name "AoG: 4.4.00 igovt IVS service", the dimension column contains "Planning:Current", in the 1st row and "Planning:Future" in the 2nd row. 
• On the parent-child link sheet the name for the capability is showing as "AoG: 4.4.00 igovt IVS service [Current]" and "AoG: 4.4.00 igovt IVS service [Future]".  There is no dimension column for either the from or to object
• vlookup fails to match as the name is inconsistent and returns a NA value.

I manually "correct" the records before distribution to the final audience.  

 

However a nasty side affect is if you use the workbook as an input file via the translator import and leave the parent-child link sheet in the workbook it will creat a number of invalid capabilities. "AoG: 4.4.00 igovt IVS service [Current]" and "AoG: 4.4.00 igovt IVS service [Future]" will be created as unique objects in addition to the exisitng dimensioned object.  This can leave you scratching your head and wondering why you have more objects after the import than you expected.  Of course these appear as duplicate objects to the causeal observer as when you view a dimensioned object in Provsion it appended the dimension to the object name, so "AoG: 4.4.00 igovt IVS service" with a dimension of "Planning:Future" witll have [Future] appended to it so it looks exactly the same as the invalid capability what has a name of "AoG: 4.4.00 igovt IVS service [Future]" but has no actual dimension.  Yes this does make the head hurt, or mine at least.  So it you are getting unepxected results this may help understand why.