ACT_EFF in TIMES and VEDA Attributes

[olexandr]

Hi,

Antti has just made me realise that Veda interprets commodities as CGs for ACT_EFF in case no input in other_indexes is specified. I can see that this is not reflected in TIMES and VEDA Attributes where Other_Indexes appears to be a mandatory input for ACT_EFF and there is no indication that Commodity can be used instead.

Amit, are there any other TIMES attributes that are treated similarly and could TIMES and VEDA Attributes facility in Veda be updated to reflect this?

Thanks,
Olex

[Antti-L]

All commodities are in fact CGs, and the current behaviour is in my view logical and user-friendly. The CG index is mandatory, but it can be specified in several ways (which is in fact true already for strict commodity indexes). However, I admit having had some influence on the design, which apparently now causes some confusion to you.  On the other hand I am glad that until now, you have nonetheless had no problems with this design, have you?   

Other similar attributes include all those that do not have a commodity index, but only a single CommGrp index, such as PRC_ACTFLO and FLO_BND. I think it would become unnecessarily cumbersome if the user would always have to add the CommGrp (or Other_Indexes) column for using these parameters (or to play with the value column headers, which may not be a good option), even though the CG would be well specified by the commodity specified on the table row.

[olexandr]

Thanks for sharing the details Antti! I personally have 2 issues with the current behaviour:
1) Lack of transparancy: i.e. behaviour is different from what one would expect by looking at TIMES and VEDA Attributes facility.
2) Error handling: no way to tell whether a user really meant to specify single commodity CG or forgot to specify ACT in Other_Indexes.

Before this I had an impression that TIMES attribute inputs had to be explicit (except for clearly specified defaults in TIMES and VEDA Attributes facility), while many of the Veda attributes were focusing on reducing the burden for the user (e.g. IRE_PRICE vs COST). It seems the distinction is not that clear.

[AKanudia]

I agree that this behavior is not evident in the Attribute master, but the rule is quite clear - as Antti has pointed out: for attributes that have a single CommGrp index and do *not* have a Commodity index, Commodity will be used as CommGrp *IF* CommGrp is not specified.