Unlocking the power of Polaris: A guide to efficient model building

AnaplanOEG

This article is part of a series on Polaris best practices. Click here for more Community content or visit Anapedia for detailed technical guidance.

Polaris is Anaplan's next-generation calculation engine, designed for highly dimensioned calculation at scale. It represents a paradigm shift in the ability to model business planning challenges without compromise.

This deck and the accompanying videos delve into best practices for modeling in Polaris to help you build more efficiently and effectively.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Natural dimensionality: Most business problems are inherently multi-dimensional, but the resulting datasets are often largely unpopulated. Polaris is designed to handle this natural dimensionality by focusing on populated space rather than empty space. For more on this topic, check out this article on Natural Dimensionality.
• Populated vs. empty space: In Polaris, only the populated space in a module consumes memory and affects calculation effort. This means that increasing the size of a dimension does not necessarily increase the amount of memory used or the calculation effort required.
• Blueprint insights: Polaris provides insights to help optimize your models, including cell count, populated cell count, calculation complexity, and calculation effort. Understanding these metrics can help you identify opportunities to improve efficiency.
• Optimization strategies: To optimize your models in Polaris, you should focus on writing efficient formulas and only doing math when you need to. This includes scoping your formulas to relevant intersections and taking advantage of Polaris's populated cell count calculation.

Polaris enables you to build less complex models that more naturally fit the shape of your data. By understanding the concepts of natural dimensionality, populated space, and blueprint insights, and by following the optimization strategies outlined here, you can start to unlock the full potential of Polaris.

Download the presentation and watch the videos to learn more.

Presentation:

Model Building in Polaris.pdf

Additional resources

For more detailed information about each of these concepts, please see the following articles. Each article includes a video overview also.

• Anaplan Polaris – Natural dimensionality
• Anaplan Polaris – Populated space
• Anaplan Polaris – Blueprint insights
• Anaplan Polaris – Understanding Blueprint Insights and Optimizing for Populated Space

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Authors:

Anaplan’s Theresa Reid (@TheresaR), Architecture and Performance Director; Stephen Rituper (@Stephen), Sr. Director, OEG; and Terry Archsmith (@TerryA), Sr. Director, Platform Training.

Special thanks to Mike Henderson (@hendersonmj) for his contributions.

andrewtye

Nice summary… on the final slide with the IF statement would it better if it read
IF NOT Valid Product then 0 else Formula - always thought it's best to do the thing that's going to happen more often first just happens that in Polaris you're checking for a false.