Document a universe using Excel and the Designer SDK

system · September 15, 2011, 10:16pm

there is a hidden VBA project protected with password.
What does that do? what is the password to look at the code?

craigman2008 (BOB member since 2011-09-15)

system · September 17, 2011, 3:34pm

It’s from Microsoft, and is not an editable portion of this utility. Do a google for “funcres.xla” to find out more if you like.

Dave Rathbun (BOB member since 2002-06-06)

system · September 18, 2011, 6:13pm

any information on this please.

lahca_ac (BOB member since 2010-01-18)

system · January 26, 2012, 6:54pm

Thanks Dwayne,

Your Excel spreadsheet works like a charm even on Universe XI3.1 SP2

This has made documentation part of Universe super easy.

Is there any way you can post a utlity for Universe Designer tool 4.0 and IDT tool (Information Design tool 4.0)

frilto (BOB member since 2009-10-11)

system · January 27, 2012, 3:17pm

For what it’s worth, Dwayne as moved on beyond Business Objects work and will not be likely to update this. That being said, there is no SDK for the IDT wtih the 4.0 release so the same techniques used for this utility for 3.1 and earlier will not be portable to the new UNX universes.

Dave Rathbun (BOB member since 2002-06-06)

system · January 27, 2012, 5:30pm

Dave,

Thanks for your prompt reply.
OK that makes sense that since there is no SDK for IDT tool, its not possible.

But do you think its possible to use this Documentation UTILITY with Universe Designer 4.0

When i use this tool it always picks up the 3.1 Designer and not the 4.0 Designer

Note: I have two parallel installations of BOBJ 3.1 and BOBJ 4.0

Also a question for you. … do you know if the Universe Designer tool is going to be Deprecated in the future and SAP wants BOBJ developers to use IDT from then.

frilto (BOB member since 2009-10-11)

system · January 29, 2012, 7:34pm

No, because of:

Yes, that is my expectation. No word as to when that will happen.

Dave Rathbun (BOB member since 2002-06-06)

system · February 9, 2012, 2:57pm

This works great. Is there a way to make changes in the Excel document and then upload back to the universe?

I want to remove “sort” ability from all my objects without having to click through all 400ish objects.

Matt Harvey (BOB member since 2007-11-28)

system · February 9, 2012, 3:40pm

Check this topic where I provided some VBA code to uncheck the LOV property for every object. It could easily be adjusted to deactivate the sort option.

Dave Rathbun (BOB member since 2002-06-06)

system · February 17, 2012, 4:02pm

did anyone provide an answer for the following error:
Compile Error:
User-defined type not defined

Sub ListTables(Tbls As Designer.Tables is highlighted.

I received this button when I click the Document a universe button.

I am using 3.1 SP4. however its not even getting to a connection point…

giggles7840 (BOB member since 2007-07-13)

system · April 26, 2012, 12:00pm

Hi Dwayne,

Thanks for the spreadsheet.

Is there a way to document the translated versions of the objects?

I noticed the language of the objects documented is always that of the original content language (i.e. the language the universe was first developed in).

For example, our universes are created in the English (USA) language for USA clients. However for UK clients we translate the objects to English (UK) via Translation Manager. I need to be able to document the translated version of the universe but am not sure how to go about this?

I did not find any language related options in the Business Objects 12.0 Object Library.

Any help on figuring this would be much appreciated!

Hira

hira_m (BOB member since 2012-04-13)

system · June 25, 2012, 1:16pm

has anyone tried this with BI 4.0 yet?

Ruune (BOB member since 2007-08-13)

system · July 24, 2012, 11:41am

Hi Dwayne,

Do you have a version of this that will document a BO a 4.0 universe?

Thanks
Kevin

keviwilso (BOB member since 2010-07-01)

system · July 24, 2012, 2:18pm

Dwayne has moved on from his Business Objects role. The script as written would probably work for BI 4.0 .unv files but will not work for .unx files. You may need to update the login calls and reset the library references.

Dave Rathbun (BOB member since 2002-06-06)

system · August 23, 2012, 12:33pm

is it possible to use this macro to open a universe directly without the designer?
I can not use the designer and on the server where i can i dont have exce;. So is it possible to open the *.unv directly when using the macro, without logging in into the designer?

maybe with some adjustments in the macro??
Hopefully anybody can help

Swimmer (BOB member since 2006-08-23)

system · August 23, 2012, 1:51pm

Hi,

I don’t think so. You need to have Excel as well as Designer installed on a machine where you want to use the utility. It’s because the utility (which is an XLS document) uses libraries of BO Designer.

Marek Chladny (BOB member since 2003-11-27)

system · September 9, 2012, 11:56am

Hi All,

Is there any macro to extract All the Universe detail to excel sheet? For example if I have 100 universes in 25 folders.

SivakumarS (BOB member since 2006-08-10)

system · September 9, 2012, 3:13pm

Hi,

As far as I know, such a macro is not available on BOB forum. But try creating one yourself.

Marek Chladny (BOB member since 2003-11-27)

system · September 26, 2012, 9:03pm

This looks like an awesome tool. I tried to run it, but starts out really fast and then slows when it hits documenting Objects. Each object is taking a couple of minutes and we have thousands in this universe. Is this normal, or might I have a parameter wrong.

THANKS

jdean1012 (BOB member since 2007-06-26)

system · October 2, 2012, 4:36pm

There is no macro, but the one provided at the very top of the thread gives you a SINGLE way of retrieving tables. You can abstract that out and create a solution that wraps that single approach into one of two solutions:

a. dirty way:
static for loops that go OVER the folder structure and grabs universes and opens it, gets tables, closes it for each universe discovered.

b. clean way:
recurssive design that is much simplier to code, but requires a little bit of understanding of how recursion works.

// example of dirty way .. depending on if you know your folder
// structure.
for(list of folders){
   if(folder element-> no subfolders){
      if(folder has universes){
          for(each universe in folder){ 
                  open universe, list tables, add to master table collection
          }
      }
   }else{ 
         for(each subfolder){ 
             more loops ..... and uses logic above to get tables.
         }
   }
}

The recursive way would dice up the dirty way into a couple of functions that could call onto itself to get through the folder structure. Design wise its much cleaner, but requires half a brain at coding.

http://www.dotnetperls.com/recursion

We use .NET to poke around the Universe level, but its much to slow for my taste and falls short of expected outcome.

Designer SDK is a bit lacking in documentation, however, the following helped me out a LOT in understanding how to utilize the Designer SDK in .NET.

http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/205ace60-6c64-2b10-f593-84945e80a70f?QuickLink=index&overridelayout=true&32804960208940

I hope that helps.

MYBOSMELLS (BOB member since 2012-09-19)