Oracle EPM - This member cannot be inserted because the parent member has another child member with the same name.

Anyone who has used Oracle Enterprise Performance Management System Workspace also known as EPMA (Enterprise Performance Management Architect) knows its error messages can be quite cryptic so as I come across solutions ill try to document them.

Let me start by saying this error pertains to importing dimensions into EPMA from SQL this is probably valid for file imports too but I have not tested that. Okay so this has given me some trouble over the last couple hours but I think we now know what "This member cannot be inserted because the parent member has another child member with the same name." really means.

In this import we are trying to create the structure similar to this.

• #root
• Category A
• Cat A1
• Cat A2
  
• Category B
• Cat B1
• Cat B2

Our import has the following format:

Parent	Child
#root	Category A
#root	Category B
Category A	Cat A1
Category A	Cat A2
category B	Cat B1
Category B	Cat B2

When running the import all the members are created in the dimension and everything looks good except that EPMA complains that with reference to Cat B1 that "This member cannot be inserted because the parent member has another child member with the same name." If you checked your data like I did and notice there is only one instance of that member in the source. Then you probably have just stumbled on to the error I came across. What EPMA is not telling you is that at least in part it is case sensitive. If you create a child member with all caps then when you reference it as a parent that should be in all caps too. In essence the should have been:

Parent	Child
#root	Category A
#root	Category B
Category A	Cat A1
Category A	Cat A2
Category B	Cat B1
Category B	Cat B2

Anyway there you go my first entry regarding Oracles Enterprise Performance Management Suite.