Results for “cause_indicator”

AI-generated from documented ETRM metadata — verify critical details on the linked pages.

Overview

The BSC_KPI_CAUSE_EFFECT_RELS table belongs to the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) product family within Oracle E-Business Suite. It stores the directed relationships between Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that express cause-and-effect logic in a strategy map — the mechanism by which one indicator (the cause) is modeled as driving the outcome of another indicator (the effect). In classic Balanced Scorecard methodology, strategy maps link objectives across the four perspectives (Financial, Customer, Internal Process, and Learning & Growth); this table is the physical representation of those directional arrows at the indicator level.

The ETRM metadata classifies this object heuristically as a link in Data Vault terms. That classification is a modeling suggestion: the table does not hold descriptive attributes about a single business entity but rather resolves a many-to-many association between two KPI records, making it a natural relationship (junction) structure. Each row joins two instances of BSC_KPIS_B — one as the cause and one as the effect.

The documentation flags the BSC module as Obsolete and records that the table is "Not implemented in this database." Consequently, on a typical 12.1.1 or 12.2.2 installation the table may exist only as a seeded, empty shell or may be absent entirely. Its primary value today is reference and migration archaeology rather than active runtime use.

Key Information Stored

The documented physical schema under owner BSC contains four columns, with a composite primary key defined by BSC_KPI_CAUSE_EFFECT_RELS_PK.

• CAUSE_INDICATOR — Business-key column and part of the composite primary key. A foreign key to BSC_KPIS_B identifying the source (driver) indicator in the relationship.
• EFFECT_INDICATOR — Business-key column and part of the composite primary key. A foreign key to BSC_KPIS_B identifying the target (outcome) indicator.
• CAUSE_LEVEL — Level or weight associated with the cause side of the relationship, used to express relative influence within the strategy map.
• EFFECT_LEVEL — Level or weight associated with the effect side, complementing CAUSE_LEVEL in the directional pairing.

Because the primary key is composed of the two indicator columns rather than a generated surrogate identifier, the surrogate-key concept is effectively subsumed by the business keys. The (CAUSE_INDICATOR, EFFECT_INDICATOR) pair is the unique business identifier and enforces that any given directed cause-to-effect pair appears once.

Common Use Cases and Queries

Typical scenarios include reconstructing strategy maps, validating that cause/effect chains are acyclic, and reporting which indicators act as drivers versus outcomes.

• Retrieving all relationships with both endpoint KPI names:

  SELECT r.cause_indicator, r.effect_indicator,
         c.kpi_name AS cause_name, e.kpi_name AS effect_name
  FROM   bsc_kpi_cause_effect_rels r,
         bsc_kpis_b c, bsc_kpis_b e
  WHERE  r.cause_indicator = c.kpi_id
  AND    r.effect_indicator = e.kpi_id;

• Counting inbound and outbound relationships per indicator to identify hub KPIs in the map.
• Detecting circular causation, which is invalid in a directed strategy map, via self-joins or recursive queries.
• Migrating legacy strategy-map definitions to a modern EPM or BI target that models driver trees.

Given the obsolete status, any query should first verify table existence and row count before being embedded in production logic.

Related Objects

• BSC_KPIS_B — Referenced twice via BSC_KPI_CAUSE_EFFECT_RELS.CAUSE_INDICATOR and BSC_KPI_CAUSE_EFFECT_RELS.EFFECT_INDICATOR; the base KPI table supplying names and definitions.
• BSC_KPI_CAUSE_EFFECT_RELS_PK — The composite primary key constraint over CAUSE_INDICATOR and EFFECT_INDICATOR.
• Other BSC_KPIS_B satellites (e.g., translated KPI tables) — Depend on the same KPI surrogate/business keys and are joined through the two indicator columns.
• BSC strategy-map and scorecard reporting views — Consume the cause/effect relationships to render graphical strategy maps; these depend on this table as the edge list.
• BSC concurrent programs and form blocks — Historically maintained rows here when users defined indicator relationships in the Balanced Scorecard UI.