Usage of compound attribute in reporting

Compounding attribute lets you derive a unique data records in the reporting. 

Suppose you have a cost center and cost accounts like this and you want to maintain proper relation:

Cost centers: 1000, 1001, 1002

Cost accounts: 9001,9001,9003

The cost accounts are not unique across cost centers and the master data will be over written.

So the cost accounts across cost centers cannot be differentiated. 

When you add the cost centers ac compounding attribute a unique record will be present. After compounding the records will look unique like below in reporting:

9001/1000

9002/1000

9003/1000

9001/1001

9002/1001

9003/1001

9001/1002

9002/1002

9003/1002

Thus differentiating each cost account across cost centers uniquely.

Compounding objects and its purpose

A compound attribute differentiates a characteristic to make the characteristic uniquely identifiable. 

In the Compounding tab page, you determine whether you want to compound the characteristic to other InfoObjects. You sometimes need to compound InfoObjects in order to map the data model. Some InfoObjects cannot be defined uniquely without compounding. 

For example, if storage location A for plant B is not the same as storage location A for plant C, you can only evaluate the characteristic Storage Location in connection with Plant. In this case, compound characteristic Storage Location to Plant, so that the characteristic is unique. One particular option with compounding is the possibility of compounding characteristics to the source system ID. You can do this by setting the Master data is valid locally for the source system indicator. You may need to do this if there are identical characteristic values for the same characteristic in different source systems, but these values indicate different objects. 

Recommendation : Using compounded InfoObjects extensively, particularly if you include a lot of InfoObjects in compounding, can influence performance. Do not try to display hierarchical links through compounding. Use hierarchies instead. 

Note : A maximum of 13 characteristics can be compounded for an InfoObject. Note that characteristic values can also have a maximum of 60 characters. This includes the concatenated value, meaning the total length of the characteristic in compounding plus the length of the characteristic itself. Reference InfoObjects If an InfoObject has a reference InfoObject, it has its technical properties:

· For characteristics these are the data type and length as well as the master data (attributes, texts and hierarchies). The characteristic itself also has the operational semantics. 

· For key figures these are the key figure type, data type and the definition of the currency and unit of measure. The referencing key figure can have another aggregation. 

These properties can only be maintained with the reference InfoObject. Several InfoObjects can use the same reference InfoObject. InfoObjects of this type automatically have the same technical properties and master data. The operational semantics, that is the properties such as description, display, text selection, relevance to authorization, person responsible, constant, and attribute exclusively, are also maintained with characteristics that are based on one reference characteristic. 

Example : The characteristic Sold-to Party is based on the reference characteristic Customer and, therefore, has the same values, attributes, and texts. More than one characteristic can have the same reference characteristic: The characteristics Sending Cost Center and Receiving Cost Center both have the reference characteristic Cost Center. Assign Points if useful 

Example : Typically in a organization the employee id are allocated in serial like say 101, 102 and so on. Lets your Organization comes out with a new employee id scheme where the employee id for each location would start with 101. So the employee id starting for India would be India 101 and for UK would be UK/101. Now note that the employee India 101 and US/101 are different. Now if someone has to contact employee 101 he needs to know the location without which he cannot uniquely identify the employee. Hence in this case location is the compounding attribute.