This article explains how dimensions and rule targets are handled in Jedox Business Rules. It describes the use of current member expressions, how rule targets can be defined for single or multiple elements, how calculation scope affects performance, and how empty strings behave in the PALO.DATA and PALO.MARKER functions.
List of target dimensions
Optional occurrence of current member expression !'DimensionName'. Current member means that the element used in dimension ‘DimensionName’ to fetch an input value for the rule is the same as that of the target cell.
Example 1:
[] = PALO.DATA("","#_CONFIGURATION",PALO.EFIRST("","#_CONFIGURATION_"))This rule assigns the same value for all cells of the target cube, and it is read from the first cell of the system cube #_CONFIGURATION. The rule does not contain !‘Dimension’, and therefore it is constant for the whole cube.
Example 2: (based on the Sales cube from the Demo database)
['2014'] = ['2013']As you can see, this rule also does not contain any construction !’Dimension’. However, because it is written in the short (implicit) form, we have to translate the cell reference to the explicit PALO.DATA(…) format to be able to count them all:
['2014'] = PALO.DATA("", "", !'Products', !'Regions', !'Months', !'Years', !'Datatypes', !'Measures')This rule does the same thing, but here we can count occurrences of !’..’. In this case, 30*24*17*1*9*7=771.120 potential unique results have to be evaluated.
Note: the number of potential values that the rule can have is one indicator of calculation time. In the example above, it will take a few microseconds to several seconds, based on the calculation engine that is used.
Defining multiple elements as rule targets
Multiple elements from one dimension can be defined as the target of a rule. The elements are listed inside of curly brackets on the left side of a rule.
Example:
['Months':{'Jan','Feb','Mar'}] = ...Rules with references to removed elements
Rules with element entries that were removed will only be disabled and are still available on the server for manual correction.
Empty strings in PALO.DATA and PALO.MARKER
When an empty string (indicated by "") is used for the <database> or <cube> argument in these two functions, the rule will apply to the current database or cube. For example, if you create a rule in database "Demo", and put an empty string in the <database> argument, the rule will be applied to the Demo database. By using an empty string in this case, the rule will still be valid even if the database is renamed.
Empty strings can be used for the <database> and <cube> arguments in PALO.DATA and PALO.MARKER functions only. They cannot be used in any other functions.
Next step: Cell References, Dynamic References, and OFFSET Functions
Updated March 9, 2026