If you enter a number in a cell in Jedox, you may encounter the following error message:
The reason for this message is that these are consolidated cells, which means they are not only defined by one element of the dimension Months and one of the dimension Products; they are also influenced by the header dimensions in the cell range D3:G3. To write into a consolidated cell, you must use splashing parameters and commands.
By splashing values into such cells, the values can be delivered to the underlying base cells without being manually entered there.
Note that if multiple base cells are marked for splashing and the syntax is incorrect, the above error message will be generated for each marked cell.
Common error messages
When splashing in Jedox, the following errors can occur, depending on the context:
| Error in Excel Add-in | Error in Jedox Web | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Cannot write into consolidated cell | Cell path is consolidated and no splashing parameter has been used | You entered a numeric value without using the correct syntax (#, !, copy, like). |
| Wrong argument received. Function received a wrong argument. (Error -32) | Function Received a wrong argument. | You included other values that are not numbers (such as alphabetic characters) on a numeric cell. |
| Insufficient rights | Insufficient access rights | You don't have the required rights to perform a splash. |
| Held cell(s): write-back not possible, active hold detected, hold ID = 1 (Error 5025) | Write-back not possible, active hold detected, hold ID = 0 | The cell input is blocked by a cell hold. |
| Wrong user for locked area; Cube area is locked by user: admin (Error 5014) | Current area is locked by user:admin | The cell input is blocked by an undo lock. |
| Splashing is not possible: sum of weights is 0.0, cannot splash (Error 5012) | Sum of weights is 0.0, cannot splash | You are trying to perform a splash on a cell where the sum of the element weights is 0.0 and all base cells currently contain the same value, for example 0. |
| Splashing is not possible: too many cells (Error 5012) | Too many cells | You are trying to perform a splash on a number of cells larger than the maximum number defined by the splash-limit parameter in the palo.ini configuration file. |
| Invalid copy value: like/predict is not allowed when the source cell is 0 (Error 5007) | Like/predict is not allowed when the source cell is 0 | You cannot use like or predict when the value of the source cell is 0. |
| Copy operation not possible: cannot copy from numeric path to string path or vice versa (Error 5020) | Cannot copy from numeric path to string path or vice versa | You cannot use the copy splashing command to perform a splash from numeric paths to string paths or from string paths to numeric paths. |
| Internal error: cannot copy between overlapping areas (Error 2) | Cannot copy between overlapping areas | You cannot use this splashing command if any of the elements in the specified source area is also in the specified target area. |
| Element <name> not unique! Please specify dimension by prefixing the element with dimension name followed by colon; e.g. Months:January | Non-unique element name used. Please try using dimension name prefix. | If the name of the element exists in multiple dimensions, you must use the dimension prefix when performing a copy command. |
| Goalseek error: no non-empty source-target pair found (Error 5018) | Goalseek error: no non-empty source-target pair found | The pairs of base cells in the source and target areas of a transfer operation must include at least one pair of cells where none of the values are 0 or empty. |
| Invalid permission entry: value not allowed here (Error 1013) | Invalid permission entry: value not allowed here | In cube cells defining access rights, only specific single-character string entries (N, R, W, D) and an empty value are permitted. |
| Invalid value: invalid characters in numeric value (Error 1041) | Code: 2900 - invalid value: invalid characters in numeric value | A normal string (letters) was written to a numeric cell. |
| Invalid value: % not allowed (Error 1041) | Code: 2900 - invalid value: % is not allowed | The input contains special characters in scenarios where they are not supported (i.e. #20% is fine, but not !20%). |
| Invalid value: wrong path argument (Error 1041) | Code: 2900 - invalid value: wrong path argument | A command such as LIKE or AS was used with an incorrect path to the source. |
Other error messages can be custom generated by the SVS scripts, under the sep_error function.
Error: too many cells
Splashing often ends with an "invalid entry" message, especially when a value is inserted in an empty cell:
Splashing in an empty cell means splitting the input value among the subsequent base elements (read more here). When the number of cells covered by the splashing is too high, you get an error message like the one above.
Although you may see only a few elements when splashing, each element can have many children. While a cell uses just a few bytes, if the splashing area is too broad, the amount of processed data will be very large.
The following example uses the Biker database and illustrates the situation.
Considering the dimensions below:
-
"Orders" = 969 base elements
-
"Year" = 12 base elements
-
"Channels" = 3 base elements
-
"Products" = 295 base elements
-
"Customers" = 440 base elements
This view is created:
The view shows "All Orders" = 969 base elements, "Year" = 12 base elements, and "All Channels" = 3 base elements. That is:
969 x 12 x 3 = 34,884 cells
The splashing runs without problems.
Now, consider you change "Product" to "All Products", amassing 295 base elements:
34,884 x 295 = 10,290,780 cells
OLAP_Server.log shows that this splashing needs around 157 MB.
If next you replace "Year" with "All Years", which count 8 base elements, you will be splashing in 82,326,240 cells.
This requires 157 MB x 8 = 1,246 MB, or around 1,2 GB. In this case, you get the message “too many cells”.
Another big splashing occurs when "Customers" is changed to "All Customers" while still using the year 2019. In that case, you have:
10,290,780 x 440(base elements) = 4,527,943,200 cells
That means 157 MB x 440 = 69,080 MB, or 67.5 GB, and will lead to error.
Updated April 8, 2025