BO and linked universes

building semantic layer
1

Just thought I’d give others a heads up. We have been using a universe
design concept of creating “component” universes and then linking them into
various “reporting” universes. The advantage being an object is redefined in
one location and all reporting universes get the update automatically and
consistency is maintained.

As we have been in development mode everything was going smoothly and the
three designers were able to contribute to all reporting universes as
required. We found out about the CORE_ORDER_PRIORITY issue in the
Technica.wri file; which resolved ordering issues that arised.

Problems have now surfaced as we are preparing for production. We are
wanting to have three domains DEV, TEST, and PROD. Unfortunately, we have
found no strategy exists to promote our universes between domains and keep
from breaking reports and maybe even reporting universes. We have tried both

  1. Import component, export component,import reporting, relink, export
    reporting to next domain.
  2. Import reporting, include links, export reporting to next domain.

In both instances the reports break due to not being able to properly
resolve the appropriate universe/object id.

We are to the point of abandoning this strategy and go to the traditional
stand alone universe. It will add to our organizational requirements to
maintain consistency among the universes. (If Jim changes object A and it is
required in two other universes the change will have to be manually done two
more times, ouch.)

If anyone has a great idea I’d enjoy the support.

Terry Boxx
Sr. Program Analyst
(aka Master Universe Designer, M.U.D.)

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

2

While we are not using linked universes, we have been successful at migrating universes for DEV, TEST, and PROD and having reports still function properly (ie, universe/object id stays the same).

To accomplish this, we had to DISABLE the “Prevent from overwriting Universe” property for the Designer Module. This is done using the Supervisor module by right-mouse-button clicking on Designer in the Configuration tab, choose properties. I believe only the General Supervisor can enable/disable this priviledge.

Once that property is DISABLED, then the migration strategy works as follows:

  1. Import a universe from PROD
  2. Export modified universe to DEV (you will be prompted to overwrite the existing universe, say ok).
  3. Once unit tested, Export universe to TEST (again, you will be prompted to overwrite the existing universe, again, say ok).
  4. Once quality tested, Export universe to PROD (again, you will be prompted to overwrite the existing universe, again, say ok).

This is our experience with universe migration. I’m not aware of any wrinkles that exist for linked universes.

Hope that helps

Donald May
maydp@pweh.com

From: Terry Boxx[SMTP:tboxx@KC.NET]
Sent: Friday, January 29, 1999 7:04 PM

Just thought I’d give others a heads up. We have been using a universe
design concept of creating “component” universes and then linking them into
various “reporting” universes. The advantage being an object is redefined in
one location and all reporting universes get the update automatically and
consistency is maintained.

As we have been in development mode everything was going smoothly and the
three designers were able to contribute to all reporting universes as
required. We found out about the CORE_ORDER_PRIORITY issue in the
Technica.wri file; which resolved ordering issues that arised.

Problems have now surfaced as we are preparing for production. We are
wanting to have three domains DEV, TEST, and PROD. Unfortunately, we have
found no strategy exists to promote our universes between domains and keep
from breaking reports and maybe even reporting universes. We have tried both

  1. Import component, export component,import reporting, relink, export
    reporting to next domain.
  2. Import reporting, include links, export reporting to next domain.

In both instances the reports break due to not being able to properly
resolve the appropriate universe/object id.

We are to the point of abandoning this strategy and go to the traditional
stand alone universe. It will add to our organizational requirements to
maintain consistency among the universes. (If Jim changes object A and it is
required in two other universes the change will have to be manually done two
more times, ouch.)

If anyone has a great idea I’d enjoy the support.

Terry Boxx
Sr. Program Analyst
(aka Master Universe Designer, M.U.D.)

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Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

3

Terry,
We had a similar problem and I had posted this problem a year ago and couple of
weeks ago. Business Objects representative
had been able to reproduce the problem and later came back that BO France was
not able to reproduce this problem and it may be
the version that I was using. We were not able to test it a year ago because we
were not in a position to change the version. However, I tested it
again recently using 4.1.3. and the reports broke. BO documentation suggests
that this can be done, But Business Objects
has been unusually silent on this issue leading me to believe they have a major
bug here. I hope they have some strategy
to circumvent this or else change their documentation to admit this cannot be
done.

Unfortunately we were not in a position to abandon the linked universe strategy
because the core universe is
developed by a vendor of ours and then we link it to our universe to get the
core universe objects. We are
using oracle and to overcome it we just exported the repository tables to the
production environment to
synchronize the two environments. I am not sure that this will have any side
effects in future, so we have
taken the risk to do so, for want of any other way.

Manoj

From: Terry Boxx[SMTP:tboxx@KC.NET]
Sent: Friday, January 29, 1999 7:04 PM

Just thought I’d give others a heads up. We have been using a universe
design concept of creating “component” universes and then linking them into
various “reporting” universes. The advantage being an object is redefined in
one location and all reporting universes get the update automatically and
consistency is maintained.

Problems have now surfaced as we are preparing for production. We are
wanting to have three domains DEV, TEST, and PROD. Unfortunately, we have
found no strategy exists to promote our universes between domains and keep
from breaking reports and maybe even reporting universes. We have tried both

  1. Import component, export component,import reporting, relink, export
    reporting to next domain.
  2. Import reporting, include links, export reporting to next domain.

If anyone has a great idea I’d enjoy the support.

Terry Boxx
Sr. Program Analyst
(aka Master Universe Designer, M.U.D.)

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

4

Donald May:

It worked fine with the strategy you have suggested. But, actually in
repository database, Universed ID and Object IDs are different. I really
don’t understand how it worked:

I have two domains: ALPHA, BETA

I have Core1 and Core2 universes in ALPHA. I have created Linked universe
called ‘LinkUnv’ using Core1 and Core2.

Now, UNV_OBJECTS table in ALPHA domain contains the following: (I have not
included Onject Name and other fields which are not needed)

OBJECT_ID UNIVERSE_ID

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

5

From: Terry Boxx[SMTP:tboxx@KC.NET]
Sent: Friday, January 29, 1999 7:04 PM

…

Problems have now surfaced as we are preparing for production. We are
wanting to have three domains DEV, TEST, and PROD. Unfortunately, we have
found no strategy exists to promote our universes between domains and keep
from breaking reports and maybe even reporting universes. We have tried both

  1. Import component, export component,import reporting, relink, export
    reporting to next domain.
  2. Import reporting, include links, export reporting to next domain.

In both instances the reports break due to not being able to properly
resolve the appropriate universe/object id.

The correct sequnce of what to do with linked universes into different domains can be found in the “release notes”, and, the readme files as well

Walter

DI Walter Muellner
Delphi Software GmbH, Vivenotgasse 48, A-1120 Vienna / Austria
Tel: +43-1-8151456-12, Fax: +43-1-8151456-21
e-mail: w.muellner@delphi.at, WEB: http://www.delphi.at

Listserv Archives (BOB member since 2002-06-25)