we have been asked to set up some kind of data dictionary for our users. since we have nicely updated the objects’ and classes’ descriptions in our universes it seems reasonable to extract that information from wherever it is located.
we tried looking into the content store on our database but haven’t been successful finding relevant data. a second approach looking into the universes’ biar files revealed some strange “binary XML”-data…
First a congratulations. Using proper descriptions within the universe is a definite best practice that I think too few implementations utilize. Self-contained documentation, business rules, etc. can only be good … fewer help desk calls, etc.
Now the bad news. On the XI platform, the universe is stored as a binary file on the filesystem part of the repository. Other than a very few pieces of information used for managing security, little is stored in the database part of the repository. In other words, the universe details are not able to be queried.
I wanted to do the same thing. I have attached a zip file that contains an excel spreadsheet. If you open this excel file hit Alt+F8 (to run macro) You have two choices, GetInfo or MakeChanges. Select GetInfo Macro which will open designer, type in your information then select the universe you want to get the info. All of the class/name/description information will populate to the excel spreadsheet. Hope this helps.
[attachment removed … the “original” is already posted here in the BOB’s Downloads forum … dwayne]
(BOB member since 2002-09-19)