Does any one know how or have any information on programmatically building a universe without using the Designer GUI at all?
dswarts (BOB member since 2004-04-27)
The Designer SDK could be used for such a task, although I struggle with how this could be useful. Building anything more than the simplest universe is a bit of an art. “Automatic” universes just don’t make sense to me. I’ll keep an open mind though. What exactly are you trying to accomplish?
Dwayne Hoffpauir 
(BOB member since 2002-09-19)
Designer can do most of the work automatically for us… But there are few things which you need to do manually as per the BUSINESS RULES like Inserting Tables in the pane, setting cardinality, creating custom universe objects etc…
But if you know what each object must have, what is the cardinality required between the tables, joins, contexts, etc; I think you can use Dwayne’s utility ‘Mass updating Universe’, modify it as per your needs and give it a try…(I think that utility takes data from the EXCEL sheet and updates the Universe).
Hope this gives you some idea.
BO_Chief (BOB member since 2004-06-06)
Actually I would like to be able to create/modify a universe without having to use designer at all. Without getting into all the nitty gritty of the application I am reporting off of I can give you some details.
The easiest way to describe it is it is a database within a database. As an over simplification is there is one table for text, one table for numbers and one table for dates. In other tables all the metadata to put them together are stored. As you can very easily see reporting off this structure is very difficult hence the semantic layer of business objects would be very useful. The metadata can be very dynamic and I am trying to see if there would be a way to have users of this system press a button and get a universe that has a large number of base functionality built in. If needed then they could modify this generated universe for any other special needs. Also when the metadata of the application changes that same button press would be able to add/delete/modify objects to the universe, which would include adding new tables since most likely it would be derived tables used in the universe.
dswarts (BOB member since 2004-04-27)
A database about databases … got it. Home grown? Not a great idea. Designer XIr2 has the ability to work with selected commercial metadata models (CWM, DB2 Datawarehouse Center, Oracle Warehouse Builder, others?) directly.
Again, the Designer SDK can add / delete tables, aliases, joins, contexts, classes, objects, pre-defined conditions, etc. Building your own application to read your home grown database, and have new information (adds / changes / deletes) reflected automatically in a series of universes would be quite an impressive application.
Worth it? Only you can decide. I’m guessing a man-year or more to develop and test. Now, someone or some process is updating your “database about databases” right? The “metadata to put them together” (your term) has a human intervention undoubtedly. My thought is that if you applied that same time and effort into standard change management for universes (Designer), you would find little productivity improvement from your “automatic” application, or best case it would take YEARS for a break-even.
As always, this is just my opinion. If you have a man-year to invest, I’d invest in the commerical metadata route, and use the built-in Designer interface. Otherwise, I’d save the money.
Dwayne Hoffpauir (BOB member since 2002-09-19)