Difference between Consolidation Process and Calculation process

Question

Hello everybody,
I need to understand what's the difference between the two process : consolidation && Calculation and why we apply consolidation only to the entity dimension?
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

this is a basic concept.
calculation is to calculate all the calculated data for a particular child entity. you right click on an entity and choose "calculate" and it performs calcs on that entity only. when the data is calculated, then it is ready to be consolidated to the parent entities. at this point your calculations have not changed the data in the parent entity, merely done the ground work so that the child entity has executed the Sub Calculate() rules and contains the correct adjusted results (numbers) based on the combination of the source input data, the journals, and the applied rules. the child entity calculation status changes to "OK" to show it is complete, and the parent entities calculation status will change to "CN" indicating a consolidation is required (the parent entity is said to be "impacted" by the change in the data to the child).
then you right click on a parent entity and choose "consolidate" and it consolidates all the data from all the children of that parent to come up with the consolidated results of that parent entity. so the consolidation includes the translation, elimination, parent-level journals and calculation of the final contribution to the parent entity or whatever is written in the Sub Consolidate() rules if using custom rules. then the total of all the contributions is what is written to the data input level of the parent entity (<Entity Currency> value member). when the consolidation process has finished, the parent calculation status changes from "CN" to "OK".
then you repeat the process further up the tree until you reach the top level parent entity.
if you choose "consolidate" on a top level entity where the children have not yet been calculated, the children will be calculated first automatically, before the consolidation can start. if you add "write to file" rules to the rules file, to log the consolidation process to a file, you will begin to understand the order of operations. HFM merely provides both "calculate" and "consolidate" choices in the user interface, as a convenience to separate the two operations in those cases where only one or the other is desired to be performed. since the consolidation cannot proceed until the calculation is completed, a consolidate of a parent that contains not-yet-calculated child entities will launch a calculate of those child entities automatically first. if you have a parent that has many children, it is sometimes beneficial to do the calculate separately so you can do small portions of the entity at a time, and then only when all the calculates are complete, to go ahead and launch the consolidation of the parent.
an explanation of what happens in the consolidation process step by step, is provided in the Oracle HFM documentation. you should also consider to attend the Oracle University courses ("Create and Manage Applications" and the "Create Rules" courses, before you fully understand the concepts of HFM and can market yourself to potential clients as a consultant or competent user.
also there is at least one book available on the subject of HFM.
please mark the thread as answered/helpful if you can understand the above explanation.