Essbase 9.3 Calc scripts. Pb with dates. How to convert (string = number) ?

Question

Hello,
I've a problem with Essbase(Planning?) Scripts on version 9.3. It looks simple but I do not find any (clean) solution :
On my Essbase database, I have a member called "Reference_Date" on my axis Indicators. It is a date data type, that is to say, it displays a number corresponding to a YYYYMMDD format. For example : 20091029 for October 29th 2009.
In calc scripts I often need to compare the month included in that "Reference_Date" with the current Member of my Time Axis (I have 12 Months members based on the format M02 for February for example). The final aim is to calculate a number of complete years since that "Reference_Date".
But theses two elements are not of the same "type" (one is a number value and the other is a "member" in Time Axis). So I'm forced to convert one of this two elements in order to compare it.
For example I can extract the month value of the "Reference_Date"' and put an "M" before it to have a Time member equivalent or I can convert the member Name M10 to a number (10))
in both cases I have the same type problem : I don't know how to convert a string into a number nor how to convert a number into a string.
(For example @CONCATENATE doesn't work with numbers). and that my only remaining problem.
I didn't find any Essbase Function which do this (conversion number <=>string).
Is anyone have an Idea ?
Thanks for your help
Best regards

Answer 1

I don't know any way for you to compare your data against your metadata. Not directly. To me it makes little enough sense to try that I'm not surprised the developers didn't provide for it.
I've converted member names to strings, manipulated the strings (calc script functions are not good at this), and turned them back into member names, but that's really the only use I've had for string manipulation. I don't think an equivalency operator even exists for string data. And I see no way to begin thinking of a member name, once converted to a string, as a number.
It makes even less sense to me to try thinking of a data value as a string. Even text values in Sys 11 are stored as numbers. Not encoded characters, but just a number to look up somewhere.
I think you can do what you want though, with something like this...
IF (@ISMBR("FY08"))
vYr = 2008;
ELSEIF (@ISMBR("FY09"))
vYr = 2009;
ENDIF;
IF (@ISMBR("M01"))
vMth = 1;
ELSEIF (@ISMBR("M02"))
vMth = = 2;
ENDIF;
"Years_Since_Reference" = ((vYr * 100) + Mth) - ("Reference_Date" / 12);
Obviously, the math will need some work, coz that doesn't actually work, but the logic above essentially turns your metadata into numbers, which is what you are after.
Good luck,
-- Joe