Examples of Resources

Cobra resources define how costs are calculated, by associating a rate set with a particular cost definition.

For example, assume that you want to define hours as the first result and direct dollars, overhead, and G&A as derived results. You create a rate file containing three different rate sets: LABRATE1, LABRATE2, and LABRATE3. These rate sets define hourly rates for different types of labor, as well as rates for overhead and G&A costs.

Resource	Rate Set	Field Name	Result
SYSAN	LABRATE1 OVERHEAD G&A	HOURS DIRECT OVERHEAD G&A	LAB1HOURS LAB1DIRECT OVERHEAD G&A
PROG	LABRATE2 OVERHEAD G&A	HOURS DIRECT OVERHEAD G&A	LAB2HOURS LAB2DIRECT OVERHEAD G&A
TECH	LABRATE3 OVERHEAD G&A	HOURS DIRECT OVERHEAD G&A	LAB3HOURS LAB3DIRECT OVERHEAD G&A

Although each result name must be unique within a given resource, a resource file may contain multiple instances of the same field name. You can, however, assign result for each field name appearing in a resource. For example, you might want to use results for the three types of labor costs described above:

Resource	Rate Set	Field Name	Result
SYSAN	LABRATE1 OVERHEAD G&A	HOURS DIRECT OVERHEAD G&A	LAB1HOURS LAB1DIRECT OVERHEAD G&A
PROG	LABRATE2 OVERHEAD G&A	HOURS DIRECT OVERHEAD G&A	LAB2HOURS LAB2DIRECT OVERHEAD G&A
TECH	LABRATE3 OVERHEAD G&A	HOURS DIRECT OVERHEAD G&A	LAB3HOURS LAB3DIRECT OVERHEAD G&A

By using results, you can distinguish between eight different categories of cost information using only four field names.

In another example, assume that you set up a number of resources under the result name QTY. The purpose of these resources is to capture quantities of various types of dissimilar materials. Using results, you could then distinguish between tons, cubic feet, and so on for the purposes of data entry, while maintaining a compact file structure for your project detail files.