My company recently switched from using business views to universes. We currently are on BOXIr1. I’m trying to find a way using the javasdk to query the universe for metadata. I’m looking to pull information like description, tables, fields, etc.
I’ve read some posts pointing to the Designer SDK. Is there a javasdk piece for the Designer? If anyone could help point me in the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
kevinr (BOB member since 2006-04-27)
Welcome to B:bob:B!
The Designer SDK is available in a COM flavor only. There is a utility here that may meet your needs, or at least provide some samples as to how the Designer SDK can be used to retrieve the “metadata” type information.
Dwayne Hoffpauir 
(BOB member since 2002-09-19)
Thanks. I had looked at that one. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work with the designer object version that comes with BOXIr1. I get a runtime error.
kevinr (BOB member since 2006-04-27)
I don’t have an XIr1 environment to test with, sorry. If you can give me more specifics on the error message, what line of code is failing, etc. I might be able to make some suggestions.
Dwayne Hoffpauir (BOB member since 2002-09-19)
The Dialog box is titled: Failue in DocumentUniverse()
The error msg says: Designer - 30:
Looks like it happens when the Designer object is accessed. So the first time it happens is the line with ‘DesApp.Window.State = dsMinimized’. If I comment it out, the error occurs on the next line.
kevinr (BOB member since 2006-04-27)
The dialog box is a generic one that I created to “gracefully” exit if an error occurs.
Open the VB Editor, and go to Tools, References. See if there is anything “funny” about the reference to Designer. You may need to remove the existing reference and then enable the proper reference.
Dwayne Hoffpauir (BOB member since 2002-09-19)
Yea. I had already done that just to get that far. You were referencing version 11.5 of the sdk and I have 11.0 that shipped with boxir1. Is there any way to download a newer version of the SDK or do I need to get it on the CD with boxir2?
thanks for your help btw.
kevinr (BOB member since 2006-04-27)
The SDK is not installed separately. It is installed along with Designer itself.
Comment out the lines that say “On Error Goto ErrorHandler.” That way you will see the “real” error message, and the specific line of code. Maybe that will give us a clue.
Dwayne Hoffpauir (BOB member since 2002-09-19)
Ok, so I’ve gotten it to work. Now my question is… Is it possible to iterate through all universes that are available on the server and document them? Or do you need to know the name of the universe and have it imported locally?
kevinr (BOB member since 2006-04-27)
What was the problem?
I’m sure it’s possible. I know that you can get a list of universes using the SDK. There is also code in this utility that iterates through documents. Maybe a similar technique could be applied to universes.
For myself, it would have little interest, because I’m almost always focused on a single universe at a time.
Dwayne Hoffpauir (BOB member since 2002-09-19)
Alright… I figured out something that at least works. I can iterate through the names in the folders or get the universe name based on the StoredUniverses array. Thank you very much for all your help.
kevinr (BOB member since 2006-04-27)