ORA-35563: Multiple values exist for an attribute of this dimension member

Question

After following the tutorial Building OLAP Cubes I was trying to make a cube with aggregation down to the day instead of down to the month.
I created a times table pretty similar to the one used in the tutorial:
CREATE TABLE EVENT_TIMES (
        HOUR_KEY        DATE NOT NULL,
        DAY_ID          VARCHAR2(10),
        DAY_NAME        VARCHAR2(10),
        DAY_END_DATE    DATE,
        DAY_TIME_SPAN   NUMBER,
        MONTH_ID        VARCHAR2(30) NOT NULL,
        MONTH_NAME      VARCHAR2(40),
        MONTH_END_DATE  DATE,
        MONTH_TIME_SPAN NUMBER,
        YEAR_ID         VARCHAR2(30) NOT NULL,
        YEAR_NAME       VARCHAR2(40),
        YEAR_END_DATE   DATE,
        YEAR_TIME_SPAN  NUMBER
As you can see, instead of a DAY_KEY like in the tutorial, I now use an HOUR_KEY.
This is a sample of the data I inserted in this table:
select to_char(hour_key,'YYYYMMDDHH24MISS'),DAY_ID,DAY_NAME,DAY_END_DATE,DAY_TIME_SPAN,MONTH_ID,MONTH_NAME,MONTH_END_DATE,MONTH_TIME_SPAN,YEAR_ID,YEAR_NAME,YEAR_END_DATE,YEAR_TIME_SPAN from event_times;
TO_CHAR(HOUR_KEY,'YYYYMMDDHH24MISS') DAY_ID     DAY_NAME   DAY_END_DATE DAY_TIME_SPAN MONTH_ID                       MONTH_NAME                               MONTH_END_DATE MONTH_TIME_SPAN YEAR_ID                        YEAR_NAME                                YEAR_END_DATE YEAR_TIME_SPAN
20140104050000                       Y2014M1D4  Y2014M1D4  04-JAN-14                1 Y2014M1                        Y2014M1                                  31-JAN-14                   31 Y2014                          Y2014                                    31-DEC-14                365
20140104060000                       Y2014M1D4  Y2014M1D4  04-JAN-14                1 Y2014M1                        Y2014M1                                  31-JAN-14                   31 Y2014                          Y2014                                    31-DEC-14                365
I then created my TIME dimension with DAY as the lowest level.
When I try the maintain cube option it fails at the 'LOAD NO SYNCH' step with the rejected records having an error message that says:
ORA-35563: (XSRWLD17) Multiple values exist for an attribute of this dimension member.
To me, this is a very cryptic message and the only explanation I find online is:
Cause
Multiple source table rows containing different values for a dimension attribute were found. Only the first of the multiple rows has been loaded.
Action
Fix the mapping or remove the rows with conflicting attribute values..
This confuses me. In the tutorial the lowest level was day and the TIMES table contained 1 record for each day.
In my example, the lowest level is hour and the TIMES table contains 1 record for each hour.
Which attribute has multiple values? And which values?
The rejected records (101) are not very clear:
ALIAS_1 = 'MONTH_Y2014M1' AND ALIAS_3 = to_date('31JAN14') AND ALIAS_4 = 31 AND ALIAS_5 = 'Y2014M1' AND ALIAS_6 = 'Y2014M1' AND ALIAS_7 = 'YEAR_Y2014'
If anyone can help point me in the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I have seen this recently. The issue is with the dimension load itself.  You have a hour level record table but the rules relating to hierarchy/attribute values etc are checked/reinforced during the load and this error comes up sometimes.
I would guess that the issue seems to be with your month level information present in the higher level month columns. There are many records corresponding to a single month in ur case, month of Y2014M1. Information relating to Month level member Jan 2014 or member MONTH_Y2014M1 is present in these records: 31 (days) *24 (hours) = 744 records. The data in these 744 records for columns - MONTH_ID, MONTH_NAME, MONTH_END_DATE, MONTH_TIME_SPAN need to be exactly the same in order for the single member MONTH_Y2014M1 to have month attributes loaded with valid values.
For e.g: if records #1 to #743 contain month_timespan=31 but for some unknown reason record #744 contains month_timespan=30 then this error will come up. OLAP does not know which value to load (31 or 30), and only 1 value can be loaded onto the month level member corresponding to month Y2014M1.
A quick check of the data should give you the answer. Typically there may be some mistake/invalid assumptions made with the boundary records (in your case, check for values for records corresponding to hour=0 or hour=23/24) which is causing the issue.
HTH
Shankar