Hi Phil,
I think you are getting there with "if used in the right way and the release controls are properly in place", but then we learned the hard way there was still often a dependency on the old principle names, now stored in the alias, and there being many references that were forgotten, or only were uncovered after the alias property got deleted afterwards etc. (trust me when I say some very ugly support cases were the result of the use of this function).
But all that would have been fine if it hadn't been for the fact that this function broke the first rule around stable IDs (in my case for the OData compliant REST API) and that is that stable IDs (read: keys) never change. But even haven gotten used to that fact and most implementers had the out of band knowledge and would have found some defensive coding strategy to guard them if that happened, it wasn't until TM1 v12, where we had to make anything and everything work with High Availability, apart from the fact that the whole service became now REST API only, where we had to decide that we can no longer support this breaking of all stable IDs that we internally now even more depend on (apart from the fact that we keep complete version history under the covers which also highly depends on stable IDs).
We understand the desire to 'rename' any object presumably, but most notably elements in a dimension. There are ideas about how to potentially help this happen, or at least make much easier, but I can tell you one thing, none of them will break our stable IDs ever again (read: might require client/consumers of TM1s REST API to have some new out of band knowledge depending on their use case).
But for now Phil I'm afraid I don't have any good news here, SwapAliasWithPrincipalName is, and will remain to be, gone in TM1 v12.
------------------------------
Hubert Heijkers
STSM, Program Director TM1 Functional Database Technology and OData Evangelist
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: Mon November 24, 2025 11:35 AM
From: Phillip Lidstone
Subject: SwapAliasWithPrincipalName - No longer valid in PA 3.1.2
Hi this function is no riskier than exporting cube data and re-hashing a dimension with a new name/alias every time this is required, if it is used in the right way and the release controls are properly in place.
In having to rebuild the cube, you will have to do mappings, output data to ASCII and Re-Load which is all Risky in its own right.
Kind regards
Phil
Original Message:
Sent: 11/24/2025 11:31:00 AM
From: Svetlana Pestsova
Subject: RE: SwapAliasWithPrincipalName - No longer valid in PA 3.1.2
Hi Vera,
No, there is no same function, this was considered as a risky function to have.
So you'd be better off by exporting the cube data , then recreating your dimension with the proper member names and aliases and then importing your data back,
Best regards,
------------------------------
Svetlana Pestsova
IBM Planning Analytics Product Manager
Original Message:
Sent: Fri November 21, 2025 12:14 PM
From: Vera Bachu
Subject: SwapAliasWithPrincipalName - No longer valid in PA 3.1.2
Is there any equivalent function is available in PA 3.1.2 as it saying deprecate?
when i try to use this function in PAW it is saying it is removed in current version of TM1.
Thanks.
------------------------------
Vera Bachu
------------------------------