Internal Key and External Key

[Former Member]

Hi There,

I have just started with Design Studio. I went through couple of tutorials. I came across Internal/External key.

To know what they stand for, I looked into user guide and somehow it related the keys with BW terminologies.

My question is are they necessary parameters in the formula ? Are they specific to BW connections?

If somebody has gone through basic example, I would like to know it.

Any help on this is much appreciated.

Regards,

Tejas

[former_member131154 · Accepted solution]

Hey Tejas,

internal and external key can be the same but can also be different 🙂

Typically I would always try to use the internal key for example "DE" for the country "Germany". In this case internal and external would be the same.

In most cases for time characteristics its important to understand the difference. 01. January 2014 for example...

the external key is: 01.01.2014

the internal key is: 20140101

does that help?

Dirk

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Dirk,

   How to know internal and external key format of any given dimension ?

Thanks

DD

[former_member131154 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

afaik there is no way to look this up in the system directly.

when you look at the master data table you will always see the internal key.

Then you have to look at the info object definition to check the used conversion rule. with the documentation of that you can understand how the "external keys" look like.

Hope this helps...

Dirk

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Dirk

[chandrasekhar6 · Accepted solution]

Hi Drik,

When I used below script in application level for enabling Drop down,

DROPDOWN_1.setItems(DS_1.getMemberList("0CALYEAR", MemberPresentation.EXTERNAL_KEY, MemberDisplay.TEXT, 20,'ALL'));

Is worked good.

When  EXTERNAL_KEY replace to INTERNAL_KEY at the time also working same functionality.

Then what is difference between EXTERNAL_KEY and INTERNAL_KEY

Thanks,

Chandra

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

The function setFilterExt on data sources takes a InputString formed from External Key as filter value. In that case, it would be compatible if you use External keys in Dropdown setItems function.

Note that setFilterExt can be used to filter multiple values as well as values within a range. Hence External Key would be a much better option for setItems if you intend to do the same.

[chandrasekhar6 · Accepted solution]

Hi Govindarajan,

Thanks for your suggestions.

Can you please share code for  how to range apply using setFilterExt.

Thanks,

Chandra.K

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

In SetFilterExt for specifying range in InputString, you would do it by giving "start - end".

For example, if you consider year, you would give it as "2012 - 2015".

And for multiple values you would give it as "2012;2013;2014".

setFilter and setFilterExt are functionality wise same and they differ only in the format of specifying filter values(Internal or External, and syntax differences)

[chandrasekhar6 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for reply Govindarajan Devarajan