Extract universe information from CS/file system?

[system]

@perlsucks

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.

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.

You can use the Designer SDK to extract the information from a local copy of the universe, however. See this utility … Document a universe using Excel and the Designer SDK … for an example.

---

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