What is the best way to document changes made to a Universe within designer? My problem is more than 1 is allow to modify Universes and sometime a change is made and someone forgot to document the change. I there a way to insert documentation withing designer?
Roncadet (BOB member since 2008-10-22)
I usually use the summary tab within the universe parameters.
There’s enough space to include a release date, author and change notes for each version that you export.
Alternatively, use a version control tool - there’s a free one called subversion that I’ve used that’s easy, especially with the TortoiseSVN front end.
The most common way I have seen is to use the Summary Tab under Universe Parameters. It’s essentially a “Notepad” where you can add freeform text - it does not appears to have any size restrictions.
jwaterbury 
(BOB member since 2007-09-21)
If it’s just a small line or two, what I do is actually write directly on the right pane… just click and type.
I have actually set aside a small area on the left of my universe for version info, it reads:
Version 0.1 - Preliminary - 1-31-2009
Version 0.2 - Added New Tables - 2-25-2009
etc…
That way I know when I open a universe if I’ve opend the correct version. When I had someone else working on them with me, we each appended our name to the right as well. This did not replace a full version documentation, but it was a quick and easy way to see and to remember that a change was made.
JPetlev (BOB member since 2006-11-01)
Do you have any idea on the limit of characters for the summary parameter?
Roncadet (BOB member since 2008-10-22)
No, but I’ve never hit it. 
We have a running change log that we write in the graphic pane on the right hand side of the universe.
We include the date, who made the change, and who requested the change. We have a request form that our report developers use to request changes to the universe. We record the file name of the request document below the information above.
We have also started to record there the result of the “Refresh Structure” option and the results of an Integrity Check after each change.
This results in at most three lines of text for each change.
The con to tracking changes this way is that if you want to print out a graphic printing of the universe design, you either have to include the change log or move the tables around in the graphic view so that you can put them on a different page from the change log. This then allows you to not print the page that the change log would be on.
I like the idea of using the Summary tab to maintain a change log, but haven’t had much time to look into changing our procedures.
We have our universes in change control (WinCVS) but it isn’t that easy to work with. We are in the process of switching to Subversion and the TortoiseSVN front so hopefully this will improve. Having the universe in change control software will make it easier to roll back changes or have some different branches of development.
You can use GetSetUniverse in combination with WinMerge.
With GetSetUniverse (see post https://bobj-board.org/t/141886)
you can extract the information of your universe into Excel.
Two versions of one universe can be compared then with WinMerge.
André Lützkendorf 
(BOB member since 2009-09-28)
We are using the Summary tab to document the universes also. The problem is that reading the log can be painful when you have a lot of changes. Furthermore, the whole thing will be displayed in CMC under the Universes section and it looks messy.
substring (BOB member since 2004-01-16)
Where in CMC does it show the Summary tab. I only see the description.
We are also using same Summary tab in our environment but we list the changes by rever order so the latest changes are always on top. No need to scroll.
Rachid
rachidb 
(BOB member since 2006-07-06)
A technique I use (can’t remember whereI read it) is to put a brief description of the universe and details of the last change made to a universe in the summary tab (date last updated, one sentence description of change). In addition we add a Universe History Class and Object into the universe and add a line (same as in the summary tab) each time we change the universe to the object description. This approach means that when creating a new report in webi the list of universes does not have a very long description appearing against each universe and when users are writing reports in webi or deski they can look at the help text for this object to see an overview of the changes made.
ziglet 
(BOB member since 2008-11-19)