Stet and Continue allow us to ignore the current intersection or to continue down the rules to find the next rule that applies. To do this, we would typically create a rule with the syntax of if something is true, then continue processing, otherwise ignore. Stet and Continue allow us to have this flexibility.
Example of Stet and Continue in a TM1 Rule
[ ] = N: IF ( ELISANC ( 'Cost Centre', 'BMFA', !CostCentre ) = 1, CONTINUE, STET );This use of STET and CONTINUE is saying that if when assessing the dimension ‘Cost Centre’ the current Cost Centre is a child of the element ‘BMFA’, then Continue to process rules. If not, then Stet (skip) this intersection.
The Feeder Required for this Rule
Here’s where it gets a little bit tricky. On the left side of our feeders we need to define the parent element from our control dimension. so continuing on from the example above, we would put ‘BMFA’ on the left side of the feeder. This would make the feeder feed from the direct descendants of BFMA.
An Example using the Version Dimension
Another example could be where we want to the rules following our STET rule to work for only a specific version. For example, we might have a situation where we want to have a set of Actively calculating versions. Here we could use a rule like this:
[ ] = N: IF ( ELISANC ( 'Version', 'Active Forecast Versions', !Version ) = 1, CONTINUE, STET );Then in the feeders we could start with:
['Active Forecast Versions',Which will limit the feeders for descendants of Active Forecast Versions.
Why would we use Stet and Continue?
One of the primary uses of the Stet function is to determine if a Rule is to be applied. So, if for example, you have multiple scenarios but want rules to be applied to two, then a rule like:
[] = IF (!p_Scenario @= 'Current Forecast' % !p_Scenario @= 'Current Budget' , CONTINUE, STET);Stet and Continue allow us to achieve that result. They limit the code that needs to be entered against every subsequent rule so that only Current Forecast and Current Budget will be impacted by the following rules.
Another example is:
['Forecast'] = IF ( ['Act/Fcst'] = 1 , ['Actual'] , CONTINUE );Here we are assessing if the Act/Fcst flag is a 1 (which represents Actuals). If so, we are bringing the values from the Actual element in the version dimension through to the Forecast element. If the flag is not 1 (ie not an historic period), then CONTINUE. This will mean we could then set up a rule further below to calculate the forecast.
Dynamically Updating Rules
Using Stet and Continue in this way, we can write rules specific to an explicit element or hierarchy. We are then confident that the rule will dynamically update when new elements are added to the hierarchy.
Using an Attribute or Control Cube in a Stet Rule
On this post, we have a great discussion about using either an attribute on the Version dimension or a simple cube to control which versions have rules enabled or disabled. Check it out!
IBM’s Take on STET and Continue
IBM have a very brief page explaining STET here. IBM’s writeup on Continue is here.
