BusinessObjects Board

Searching Report Files by Universe

general discussion
#1

Hi,

I wasn’t sure where to post this, so I hope that here is OK. I am probably asking the impossible anyway, but I shall still ask.

Upon starting work with my current company I have inherited their BIS systems.

There are a lot of BO universes, and I’m pretty sure that many of them are old versions that should no longer be used.

I was wondering if there was any way at all to search through the file system & pull out details of all Business Objects reports, which version they were saved with & which universes are used as DPs.

To be honest I’m not expecting anything positive from this, but thought Imay aswell ask anyway.

Thank you

SHardy :uk: (BOB member since 2006-04-05)

#2

Hi,

you can start in BOB’s Download section with these posts:

I believe that some of these VBA codes can be altered so at the end you would get the universe information for each BO report’s data provider.

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

#3

That’s an excellent start. Thanks. I may be able to do something with the code from the 2nd post to get it to either:

  1. Search all subfolders on a specified drive for *.rep files and perform the action against each of those.

  2. Work through a (provided) list of files with full path as opposed to searching for files.

Thanks for your help.

SHardy :uk: (BOB member since 2006-04-05)

#4

Is there anyway, via vba, to either:

i) Return the version of Bus Obj that the report was saved in.

or

ii) Skip a file if a dialog is returned upon opening - such as “This file can only be opened with version 6.0.0.0 or later of this software.” or “blah.rep is in an earlier version of Business Objects. Blah, blah, blah”.

The reason that I ask is that we are still in a transition between versions 5.1.8 & 6.5. I know the obvious way would be to run this through 6.5 but supressing messages. However, I know that there are some universes that are ONLY available through v5.

Any help would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks.

SHardy :uk: (BOB member since 2006-04-05)

#5

And what about putting this stuff in the VBA code ?

Dim BOApp  As busobj.Application
...
Set BOApp = busobj.Application
...
BOApp.Interactive = False

bernard timbal :fr: (BOB member since 2003-05-26)

#6

sorry to sound like a dunce, but what exactly would these do?

Thanks

SHardy :uk: (BOB member since 2006-04-05)

#7

Why do things complicated?!?

If you have all your documents stored in the BO repository you can use the universe on the BO repository, which you can find in BOB’s download area.

In this universe you see which report uses which universe.

Hope this helps you.

Kind regards,

Bert Dijks

BertD :netherlands: (BOB member since 2005-02-02)

#8

A rather sinister option is to take a back up of all the reports, delete them from the repository and see which people actually ask for. :twisted:

Alternatively, suggest that documentation ( :wah: ) is needed for all the reports and you’ll buy yourself time to learn more about the reports and all the details about them. I could understand that you’d be under pressure from your boss not to do this, but given what you’ve “inherited”, it seems the best approach in terms of being able to understand where you are.

Consider the following too:
Are there any reporting requirements documents knocking around?
Are there any data warehouse design documents available?
How many universes are there and does this correlate with how many you believe there should be? If not, say why not.

#9

The reports aren’t stored in the repository. Instead there are reports saved all over the file system.

However, I was able to modify the code from one of the examples given by marekchladny.

I now have all the information that I needed.

Thanks for the advice given. It gives me a bit more to think about while having a “tidy-up”.

Many thanks,
Simon

SHardy :uk: (BOB member since 2006-04-05)