A ragged hierarchy can represent a geographic hierarchy in which the meaning of each level such as city or country is used consistently, but the depth of the hierarchy varies. Figure 1 shows a geographic hierarchy that has Continent, Country, Province/State, and City levels defined. One branch has North America as the Continent, United States as the Country, California as the Province or State, and San Francisco as the City. However, the hierarchy becomes ragged when one member does not have an entry at all of the levels. For example, another branch has Europe as the Continent, Greece as the Country, and Athens as the City, but has no entry for the Province or State level because this level is not applicable to Greece for the business model in this example. In this example, the Greece and United States branches descend to different depths, creating a ragged hierarchy.
The workbench supports the use of ragged hierarchies. Skipped levels in ragged hierarchies are ignored and treated as if they do not exist. At least one column in the dimension table is required for each level, and missing levels will contain null values.