HANA Hierarchy - Time Dependency - Purpose of "Validity Period"

[former_member229185]

When setting up a time dependent hierarchy, what is the purpose of the "Validity Period" area? It seems like the "Valid From Column" and "Valid To Column" would serve this purpose:

Let's just say we (and our users) were extremely disappointed that there isn't native support for hierarchy values changing over time. By "no native support" I mean it double counts and gives our financial users a wrong answer.

[pfefferf]

Hi Zach,

as the area already describes, the validity period is for the purpose to define the validity period interval or key date during runtime via input parameters defined on the view. This restricts the hierarchies used either for the validity period range for the specific key date.

Regards,

Florian

[former_member229185]

Hi Florian,

You've managed to use all of the same ambiguous words that appear on the dialogue box in a slightly different order.

Can you describe a real world scenario where this would provide some different or extra behavior than specifying the Valid From / Valid To columns? The UI is designed in such a way that these parameters are required but I'm not clear what extra benefit this would provide. In our case the validity period *is* the Valid From / Valid To columns.

Thanks,

Zach

[pfefferf]

Hi Zach,

Valid From Column and Valid To Column define which columns hold the information to build up to time dependent hierarchy. If you many different time frames you will get many different versions of your time dependent hierarchy.

So if you wanna just report on specific hierarchies valid for a specific time frime or a specific key date, you can restrict that with that additional parameters.

For instance, you have hierarchies for 2015 and 2016, but you are only interested in the hierarchies for 2016, restrict it by setting Validity Period Interval to 01/01/2016 to 12/31/2016.

Best Regards,

Florian

[SergioG_TX]

Zach,

indeed sometimes the responses are not clear or just redundant.. anyways, the validity period seems like it would be if you want to restrict the input parameters on a system date so say you want to implement the input parameters only from day1 to dayN independent of the column dates..

for your column dates, you should use a filter to restrict the records based on those column dates or even use an input parameter so you can dynamically dictate your date range

hope this helps!