I’m currently tasked to fix old universes and rports that was created from old version, Probably BO 3.0 or 4.0. They currently have 8 universes and 372 corporate reports. The BO developers before me have been fixing and upgrading to new BO systems. During the fix, they ended up breaking one universe to 8 universes (they used to have only one universe) to support their 372 reports. They are currently runing BOXI R2 SP4 and would like to move to BOXI R3 SP3. In this move they want to fix their universe first which means merge all universes back to one then start converting their current deski reports to webi. The whole things seems pretty big project for me. I’m pretty good with the things that I do but still I need some thoughts from you guys on how should I proceed this task. I’m thinking about attacking universe first (fixing compatibily, joins, alias, contexts if any) then move to reports.
Still what are things that I should consider and how should I proceed?
Your feedback will be appreciated.
hmm why don’t you just convert all your Deski reports to Webi in XIR2 & then migrate to 3.x. This way you wont have to put togather a universe & then break it up again. This should help;
Well, my situation is little different. their main focus is to combine those 8 universes back to one. as far as converting deski to webi I would think that it would be wise to do it once your underline universe is back to one and stable. What’s your thought?
Webi provides more options for switching data providers from one universe to another than Deski. For that reason, I would get the universe done first, but as a new universe. Meaning don’t take one of the existing universes and make it the new larger universe. Keep the 8 in place, and create a 9th.
To be honest, though, there are good and valid reasons for keeping smaller universes. A single larger universe is much harder to build and maintain (especially if it includes contexts). Something that escapes notice is that you cannot migrate part of a universe. Suppose that universe 1 and universe 3 both request new changes. Both sets of changes are made to your new larger universe, but all of a sudden universe 3 changes have to be dropped due to data or some other issue that requires more time to solve. You can’t migrate only the code changes related to universe 1, so you have to undo everything that was done.
Smaller universes are much easier to maintain and manage over the longer term. What were the reasons given for combining back into one?
Thanks for your input Dave. I kind of think the same way too. Their argument is when they first started BO back in 97-98, they had one universe. gradually due to the BO version compatibility and many other universe issues they have to break it to two then three then four … then the eighth. they have not done much that relates to their business requirements vs BO software requirement. The reason there are 8 universes is because the universe fixes that they did on each BO software releases.
I’m planning to create a brand new universe with the help of old one. then validate joins, alias, contexts and other business rules. I should be able to do that by printing the universe in pdf format and list all business requirements. once this is done then I’ll start converting reports to webi. conversion will be tough though as I never had any experience in webi. I’m sure that I may have to recreate more than 50% of deski reports in webi. I hope webi is not that difficult to learn.
what’s your thought?
Here is what Im thinking:
If there is any way I can pull all the reports from the repository and display what universe, tables, joins, contexts it has used. May be this will help me to narrow down my issue.
I dont do SDK or any Java programming but do any of you have a program that I can use which will lists the reports, the universe that each report has used, the table each report has used, the joins each report has used, and the context each user has used. If there is a program that does this then itll be great.
(BOB member since 2009-08-21)
(BOB member since 2002-06-06)