The future of Business View Manager and Universe

[Former Member]

Hello all,

I am at the early stage of BO XI R3.1 implementation and try to decide which components of BO I need to use.

For the front-end tools, I will be using WebI, Crystal Report 2008, and XCelsius Dashboard 2008.

For the semantic layer build, would you please give me an advice which tool do I have to use? Is it Business View Manager or Universe?

Please advise...

Thank you much...

Edited by: indo81 on Oct 23, 2009 5:10 PM

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

You should use Universe Designer for creation and modelling of OLAP and Relational Universes.

Thanks,

Tanner Spaulding

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Tanner,

From what I understand, the Universe Designer (UD) can NOT connect to multiple databases in a single Universe but Business View Manager (BVM) can. Do you by any chance know if one day UD will be able to do the same thing?

Edited by: indo81 on Oct 26, 2009 4:22 PM

[PPaolo · Accepted solution]

Hello,

you can create a Universe on top of multiple data sources using Data Federator (the various sources will be then mapped by Data Federator in a single virtual source to which you will connect with Universe Designer).

In general, Business Views are not going to be enhanced, our strategy is moving towards Universes which will take over some of the Business Views features.

When you have to choose your architecture, keep in mind that BVs are mainly for Crystal Reports, if in the future you want to add other SAP BusinessObjects tools in your system (Web Intelligence, Explorer,...) they will not be using BV but Universes.

This said, if your project is well defined, you can foresee its evolution and BVs give you complete satisfatcion you shold still consider them, they will be supported still for a long time.

Hope that it helps

PPaolo

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Pierpaolo,

Thank you for your response. It is very helpful... Just one more question, there are two tools we can use to build universe: Universe Designer and Univer Builder. Which one do you recommend to use?

From the document that I have read, it seems to me if I want to get data from XML data sources and Oracle Analytics Services then I have to use Universe Builder. If I want to get data from databases, then I have to use Universe Designer.

Is this correct?

[PPaolo · Accepted solution]

Hello,

you will use Universe Designer.

the difference between Universe Builder and Universe Designer is that the first is a tool to automatically build Universes from a file describing a source.

Builder will take as input an XML file describing a source metadat from SAP BusinessObjects DI, CWM (Olap or relational), DB2 Cube Views, DB2 Warehouse, Oracle Warehouse Builder and Oralce OLAP and automatically create a Universe.

With Universe Designer you will create a Universe manually from scratch.

Best regards

PPaolo

[Former Member]

check out this link

http://sap-business-objects.blogspot.com/2011/04/business-objects-information-design.html

regards

Gowtham

[Former Member]

Hey,

Further to what Pierpaolo has written, the universe creation mechanism in both Universe Builder and Designer is available as a plug-in for each meta-data source supported in both. For each update to respective plug-ins, the updated version can be accessed in Universe Builder but not in Designer. That is why Universe Builder can be used as a 'stand alone' product which is not the case in Designer as the features would be restricted to your version of BO software.

Regards,

Omar