Semantic Modeler Should Do Better Checking of Leading/Trailing spaces

Doug Ross

I ran into an issue today with the FAIDP Semantic Modeler showing a validation error after a snapshot had been applied and published. The error said there was a problem with a custom column having leading / trailing whitespace characters

Performing a validation on the snapshot showed no errors.

After doing some research, I came across this hint below in support document

Solution

Even if a particular column is not selected as key or attribute, it still comes in the payload and it can fail in the backend.

So, please check for ALL the column names, display names, hierarchy names, table names, subject area names, etc., and remove the leading/trailing white spaces, save the changes and publish.

Note: The whitespaces will not throw any error or failure, and get applied successfully, but this will fail during upgrade in the backend. Hence remove the leading/trailing whitespaces.

One way to find the columns with whitespaces:

In the browser, go to Settings and Developer Tools > Network tab. Then, navigate through the SME step which showed errors with whitespaces.

The Network tab will show a Payload step now. Copy the contents of this request in a notepad. Then, search for two strings -> ( ",) - space followed by double quotes followed by comma, and (" ) - double quotes followed by space. If you find any match, then those are the columns or names with leading / trailing whitespaces. Remove the whitespace in that object and save the changes. The errors should go away.

 

So I went into the browser and turned on developer options and navigated through the extension… I found on the initial extend a dimension step where there was a trailing space on the Extend Dimension Name. So now I know what to correct.

But here are my suggestions:

1. Don't allow leading/trailing spaces on the Extend Dimension Name value in the first place or any other display name values
2. Make sure the validation of the sandbox covers everything that would occur after it is published
3. If you are going to report an issue, provide enough detail that it doesn't require searching using developer tools in the browser to locate. If you know there is an issue, certainly you can record where it is.
4. I would suggest replacing the term "Extend Dimension Name" with "Extend Dimension Step Name"

Caroline Blanchard

Great idea @Doug Ross ! This would be very useful for our organization.