Assets Collection Snapshots

·Table-specific notes
· BEN Assets Snapshots Universe 

The Assets snapshot tables were created to facilitate historical reporting of BEN Assets data. Since the BEN Assets online system, as well as the standard ASSETS, ASSET_CATEGORIES and ASSET_LOCATIONS tables contain only the most recently available information, the snapshots capture the attributes of an asset, its category and location, as that data appeared when the BEN Asset period closed. All users of the Assets data collection are welcome to use the snapshots; the standard data collection security applies to all queries of these tables as well.

The following are notes and cautions on the snapshot tables in general. Please refer to table-specific notes for documentation particular to individual tables.

• Snapshots exist for a subset of the Asset Collection tables, including:
  
  

  Table	Snapshot Name
  ASSETS	ASSETS_SNAP
  ASSET_CATEGORIES	ASSET_CATEGORIES_SNAP
  ASSET_LOCATIONS	ASSET_LOCATIONS_SNAP

• The columns included in the snapshot tables are identical to those in the current Assets tables, with the additional of columns to identify the accounting period of the snapshot. These columns are:
  

  Fiscal_Year
  Fiscal_Month_Seq
  Accounting_Period
  Calendar_Year
  Calendar_Month

• Snapshots of the ASSETS, ASSET_CATEGORIES, and ASSET_LOCATIONS table are taken on a monthly basis, after the close of the BEN Assets period, but before any new transactions have been posted in the new period.

• The data goes as far back as March 2008 (the MAR-08 period, in fiscal year 2008), when BEN Assets was implemented, and continues from that point, through the most recent closed period.

• Since the snapshots capture data at the end of each period, data changes are picked up as they occur. These changes are not applied to previous periods, to preserve the accuracy of the snapshot as a view of the data at a point in time. There may therefore be cases where data appears incorrectly or different in an early period, and appears correctly in later snapshots after it was corrected or updated in the source system.

• Note that any changes that occurred in the course of a period, but which were changed again before the period closed, will not be reflected in these tables. The ASSET_CHANGE_HISTORY and ASSET_LOCATIONS_HISTORY tables capture day-to-day changes of key asset attributes and location information.

• These snapshots tables, like the other tables in the Assets data collection, can be found in the DWGL schema in the Data Warehouse.
  

Table-Specific Notes

ASSET_LOCATIONS_SNAP: Since attributes associated with physical space (buildings, floors, rooms) may change over time, you may want to refer to the DWADMIN.BUILDINGS_HISTORY, DWADMIN.FLOORS_HISTORY and DWADMIN.ROOMS_HISTORY snapshot tables for details about the location building, floor or room contemporeanous with the ASSET_LOCATIONS_SNAP record.

BEN Assets Snapshots Universe

A special Business Objects universe, BEN Assets Snapshots is available for querying the snapshot tables. This universe is structured very similarly to the main BEN Assets universe, with the following differences:

• Fiscal_Year and Fiscal_Month_Seq are included in the joins between the tables.

• ASSET_ADJUSTMENTS, ASSET_INVOICES, ASSET_RETIREMENTS, ASSET_CHANGE_HISTORY and ASSET_LOCATIONS_HISTORY are not included in the snapshot universe.

• ASSET_LOCATIONS_SNAP is joined to BUILDING_HISTORY, FLOORS_HISTORY and ROOMS_HISTORY to retrieve phyiscal space details contemporaneous with the location snapshot records.

You can re-direct BEN Assets universe queries to the snapshot universe, so long as all the result objects and conditions from your query exist in the universe to which you'd like change. To do this, go to the Data menu, and select "View Data" to display the Data Manager window. The General section of the Definition tab contains a field called "Universe", which has a small button with "..." directly to the right. When you first display this window, the Universe field will display the universe against which the query is currently directed. Click the "..." button to display a list of all other universes to which you have access. Choose the one to switch your query to, and click ok. As long as all the objects in your query are available in the new target universe, that universe name will now appear in the Universe field.)