WebInt Architecture

building reports webintelligence legacy 1/2
1

So, after about 15 months of working with BOBJ , today I just discovered an interesting aspect of the WebInt architecture.

We have a 3-tier platform: 1 web server, 1 application server (WebInt, running on Sun Solaris), and 1 database server. I encountered a very strange situation wherein one of my Universe files seemed corrupted. While I was digging around trying to understand what was going on, I found the WIData directory on my app. server. This directory mimics the Universe/Universe structure on my client machine (or Universe\Universe for Windows users). I found copies of many (probably most) of the Universes currently stored in our Repository here on the file system.

I find this very surprising - WebInt is extracting a copy of the Repository Universe and storing it on the application server’s file system. Doesn’t that sort of negate the usefulness of having files stored in the Repository? Could I simply FTP a UNV file to the app server, and bypass the “Export” feature of Designer? And, how does the app server determine when it needs to refresh its local copy? There are also numerous “udo” and “lov” files stored on the file system, and many of those seemed to have rather “stale” timestamps on them.

I ended up deleting the UNV file from my app server, deleting it from my Repository using Supervisor, then re-exporting my local copy to the Repository. The associated reports then started working correctly.

I (we) appreciate any information pertaining to this issue. Thanks in advance…

CNV_Ben (BOB member since 2002-08-15)

2

That’s how it’s supposed to work.

When you update the universe, the process is supposed to check whether the universe in the repository is more current than that cached on disk. If so, then it imports from the repository. If, for some reason it has been corrupted on disk, then the solution is to delete it manually and let it reimport.

Steve Krandel :us: (BOB member since 2002-06-25)

3

To stress what Steve already mentioned:

It is usually NOT a good idea to delete universes from the Business Objects Repository and then re-export them. Reason: When deleting a universe you will loose the hidden “magic” universe ID.

The following steps should have been sufficient:

  1. Delete all local *.unv, *.lov, *.udo files from your Application and/or WebI server

  2. Re-Export your universe(s) from Business Objects Designer to the repository.

Andreas :de: (BOB member since 2002-06-20)