Applications and models in Planning Business Modeler

At its highest level, Planning Business Modeler consists of an application that has a shared library of predefined dimensions, model types, and associated business rules, a parent model site, and model subsites.

An application is the highest level structure. It contains all components in Planning Server and can perform complex planning, budgeting, forecasting, and other performance management functions by defining models, dimensions, data input assignment cycles, and associated business processes. An application contains a shared library and model sites.

The application serves as the primary container for all information that you must have in order to store and describe your business data, the processes that control data access, and the security settings that define who can access your data definitions.

The application also contains a hierarchy of model sites that are used to organize your application and data. Each application has one parent model site that contains predefined dimensions and global assumption models. All other model sites in the application are referred to as model subsites.

Model subsites represent a company’s business structure. They can be based on a company's reporting structure, financial processes, operational processes, and so on. For example, a company may create subsites that are based on divisions, on business units, or on security access restrictions that require separation of processes or functions.

Model subsites inherit some of the shared metadata associated with the parent model site, including models, dimensions, and dimension members. Additionally, model subsites might contain models, dimensions, or dimension members that are unique to that model subsite.

Models are the most basic unit of data storage in Planning Business Modeler, and are created within model sites. Models contain member sets, which are user-defined sets of dimension members and can work together to calculate values.

In This Section

• About the application calendar
  Describes the application calendar, and describes how Planning Business Modeler uses the calendar.

• About types of models
  Describes the model types that are available in Planning Business Modeler.

• About names and labels
  Describes naming conventions and restrictions.

• About deploying a model or model site
  Describes how Planning Business Modeler implements deployment.

• About model, dimension, and member associations
  Describes the process of creating formal associations between models and mappings between dimension members.

• About assumption models
  Describes how Planning Business Modeler uses assumption models.