BusinessObjects Board

Alphabetizing table fields with BOXI Designer

building semantic layer
#1

Hi all.
I am fairly new with BusinessObjects XI designer and have a question I hope someone can help me with. When I import a universe into designer and view table structure, within the tables the fields appear to be laid out in DB order. Example:

Customer

cust_id N
first_name C
last_name C
age N
phone_number C
address C
city_id N

However, when I look at the sample CLUB universe with similar fields I see they are alphabetized:

Customer

address C
age N
city_id N
cust_id N
first_name C
last_name C
phone_number C

Looking at the CLUB databse, the structure is like the first example. Within Designer, if I do VIEW > REFRESH STRUCTURE, the fields are popped into DB order - they are no longer alphabetized as shown in the second example. How can I alphabetize my tables field view in designer? I have some tables that are several 100 records long and finding fields within it is somewhat cumbersome. Thanks for any tips!

JBL82259 :us: (BOB member since 2006-04-21)

#2

And I did find in the manual this setting under universe parameters, which has no effect, even after saving, exporting and importing:

COLUMNS_SORT
COLUMNS_SORT = Yes|No

Values: YES Columns are displayed in alphabetical order
NO Columns are displayed in the order they were retrieved from the database.

Default: No

Description: Determines the order that columns are displayed in
tables in the Structure pane.

JBL82259 :us: (BOB member since 2006-04-21)

#3

You will find a technique described here that may work.

Dwayne Hoffpauir :us: (BOB member since 2002-09-19)

#4

Thanks Dwayne. The folks at BO confirmed this to be a bug with the COLUMN_SORT parameter.

JBL82259 :us: (BOB member since 2006-04-21)

#5

What version are you using that has the bug? I’m wondering if it’s been fixed in XIr2, maybe with SP1, etc.

Dwayne Hoffpauir :us: (BOB member since 2002-09-19)

#6

I’m using XIR2SP1. They have a fix for the 6.X versions.

JBL82259 :us: (BOB member since 2006-04-21)