Loaded entities vs assigned entities?

[BobNelson]

Under Calculation Definitions, there are options to run a task for either Loaded entities or Assigned entities.

1.  I am assuming that loaded entities stops to filter through only those entities that are part of the data load?  Am I correct in this assumption?  I saw nothing explicit in the documentation to that effect, but maybe I wasn't looking in the right place.

2.  Has anyone ever tested to see what the performance impact of using loaded entities might be?  Up to this point, I have only ever seen assigned entities in a workflow.

[Henning · Accepted solution]

Hi, 

1. Yes, this definition will only run calculations for entities that actually loaded data in the workflow. So if you have 3 assigned entities, but only two loaded data to O#Import, only two will be calculated. This also helps in case the setting "Can Load Unrelated Entities" is set to True, i.e. you can calculate more entities than the ones assigned to the workflow step.

2. No, I have not tested it yet, but especially for customers with large data units and complex calculations, this should make an impact if only the relevant entities are calculated. Nevertheless, in the majority of solutions, only a single entity, or very few, are assigned to a workflow, in which case the difference would not be that noticeable (if at all).

Apart from that, the setting needs to be in line with the requirements. As pointed out, maybe there are entities that are not assigned to the workflow that you need to calculate which have been loaded through this workflow. Then you need this setting. Or, if you have no data load for an existing entity, but you need the opening balances to be calculated, you probably want to use Assigned Entities.

[BobNelson]

Thank you.  I'm still thinking in the HFM world where you always wanted to 'Consolidate All with Data' and you always wanted to avoid 'Consolidate All'.  Of course, as you mention opening balances can always be problematic.