• Article

Members (Master Data Services)

Members are the physical master data that you manage in Master Data Services. For example, a member can be a specific product, such as Road-150 bike, or a specific customer, such as Diane Prescott.

As illustrated in the following table, you can think of members as rows in a table. The table represents an entity, the rows in the table represent members, and the columns in the table represent attributes. Each cell represents an attribute value.

Entity example

In the case of a member from the Product entity, the member includes the product name, code, and any other attribute values, like the color Blue or size Large. In the following example, each member is made up of a Name, Code, Subcategory, StandardCost, ListPrice, and FilePhoto attribute value.

Note

Each code must be unique within an entity.

Entity example with sample data

To consolidate a list of members for reporting or analysis, you can create hierarchies or collections.

Member Types

There are two types of members:

  • Leaf members are the default type of members in an entity. In explicit hierarchies, leaf members are the lowest level and cannot have children. In derived hierarchies, leaf members are the only type of member. Leaf members from one entity are used as parents of leaf members from another entity.

  • Consolidated members are used in explicit hierarchies only. Unless an entity is explicit hierarchy and collection enabled, consolidated members do not exist for the entity.