Information Design Tool (**Universe

Design Tool)

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Creating a Universe using IDT

**Here the data is stored in a MS Access DB and connection to the DB is made

using ODBC**

Our intension is to design/develop a Universe, which can be used by the webI

users to create reports as per the requirements. The process is as follows;

1: Creating a project

2: Creating Database Connections

3: Creating Data Foundation layer

4: Insert Tables and Joins to DFX layer

5: Creating Business Layer

6: Creating Folders/Classes and Objects in BLX layer

7: Creating Queries to Test

8: Publish to repository

Tutorial 4

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SAP Business Objects 4.0 SP02

Delegate Measures

Consider the tables below

Average cannot easily be projected because the source data could be much

skewed. Even with a very small data set the results of an average projection can

be wrong.

A designer cannot predict the unintentional wrong values during projection. This

is where the delegation process comes in. Instead of using Average function for

calculation we use the database delegated option.

If we use this delegated measure in webI for queries, the average calculation is

not done by webI rich client, instead the document will retrieve the calculated

results from the database directly. As the database has access to the detailed

data, the result will be based on a weighted average.

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SAP Business Objects 4.0 SP02

Loops

This happens in universe schema during design and not in database layer.

The above table Country is used as a lookup for Showroom-Country and same

time lookup for Region-Country, from Client Table. Hence the data is returned

only when Showroom Country = Client Country. And the resulted table will have

only the revenue generated by US clients in the US showrooms and UK clients in

the UK showroom. So the result won’t include all the intended values and return

fewer rows from actual.

We can resolve loops using either of the two methods,

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SAP Business Objects 4.0 SP02

� Aliases

It breaks the loop by using the same table twice in the query. One table can

be called as the alias of other. It will only act as different name to the same

base table.

� Contexts

The loop is resolved by defining a specific path through tables in a loop. It

ensures that joins are not included from different paths within the same

SQL query.

Resolve loops using Alias

To insert the Alias, Select the table and select Alias from the right click menu

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SAP Business Objects 4.0 SP02

Make the original table free from all joins using aliases

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SAP Business Objects 4.0 SP02

Resolve loops using Contexts

Contexts resolve a loop by defining a join path. Contexts are used where there are

multiple fact tables sharing lookup tables.

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SAP Business Objects 4.0 SP02

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Predefined filters

One can add filters in Business layer similar to dimension and measures

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