Peculiar problem with Essbase (Calc Script) - substitution variable / UDAs

Question

This is odd but I have a script like :
VAR iloop=1,break=0;
FIX(<required POV>)
Loop (20,break)
VAR Country_total1,Country_total2,Country_total3;
FIX (@UDA(Entity,@ALIAS(@CONCATENATE("&Country",iloop)))) // &Country1, &Country2 - are substitution variables with UDAs stored as strings
Statements;
/* +<statements for calculating total values.. for that country and stored against variables>+ */
Country_total1=Country_total1+ +<Calculation>+
ENDFIX
/* Second part : Now again the calculations stored in the variables are to be stored against specific entities */
FIX (@UDA(Entity,@ALIAS(@CONCATENATE("&Country",iloop))))
FIX(@ISUDA(Entity,<Check1>)
..... Assign to relevant account
ENDFIX
ENDFIX
ENDLOOP
ENDFIX
Now the problem is that the first fix statement works just fine, but the FIX statement in the 'second part' throws an error
Error: 1200354 Error parsing formula for [FIX STATEMENT] (line 66): expected type [STRING] found [EXTVAR] ([iloop]) in function [@CONCATENATE]
If I hard code the 'second part' FIX statement to the substitution variable directly - it works just fine.
How can the first statement work and not the second one ? They are exactly the same.

Answer 1

Glenn, thanks - I hadn't thought of that :).
But it still does not entirely solve my problem (please see my previous post depicting a requirement similar to ours )
- We have lots of countries (50-60+ might be much more) and each country can have multiple entities (3-4 on an average - can go unto 7-8)
- so good guess would be around 200 entities
- So say I have to do it for 2 countries only (two entity types). Then I need 4 variables - 2 for each country ('country 1 ET1 total', 'Country 1 ET2 Total')
When the list is 20 counties - variables become 40 :(.
- Still leaving aside the 40 variables for a bit -
There are subsequent steps of calculations which needs to be done based on these totals (which are exactly the same for all countries) - just that we need the correct totals to begin with and the rest is already stored in the DB
So since I have a different variable for each country - I cannot write one single calculation block to use the variables sequentially one by one (can I ?)
I might have to write a separate calculation block for each of these countries. (20 separate blocks)
That's what I was trying to avoid and simplify with the substitution variable (but is not working)
- Create substitution variables - which would store the alias of the required countries (2/10/20 as many required)
- Loop through these substitution variables - using them one by one
- So I just need one single block of calculation with all the variable in the calc script being reused after each country calculation is done
- and the user need not go into the script, as the only thing that will change are the countries. And he can change it easily through the substitution variable.
Edited by: Ankur on Jun 27, 2012 12:53 PM