Strategy for Detect Contexts in Universe Designer

[Former Member]

During the universe design phase I added all the tables,defined joins and cardinalities,Checked the loops and the integrity of the universe to see if there are any issues.Everything looks good but once I click detect contexts I can see a list of candidate contexts.My query is what should be the stratey dealing with these contexts.Should I go ahead and add all these contexts or how to take a call?As far as I know if I create objects based on the joins from these contexts I get incorrect data.Can anyone guide me with the approach?

[former_member142702]

Contexts are used to solve problems eg. loops, chasms or fan traps.

I will not recommend to add all recommended contexts into your universe. Since you have already run all integrity checks I assume that no loops were detected. Still it makes sense to look for areas where chasm or fan traps may exist. Use contexts only to solve those problems.

Another case where you may want to use contextes is in order to make objects incompatible to each other (eg. if plan data are not avaqilable with the same granbularity as your is-data). In this case introducing contexts in order to force the users to build two different queries at report level and merge the results there may make sense.

For more information about the above problems you can check the Universe Designer*s guide ( http://help.sap.com) for your BOBJ version.

My advice: use contexts only for solving specific problems

Regards,

Stratos

[Former Member]

Thanks a lot for your recommendations.I have earlier added all the recommended contexts by the designer.I'll remove these and instead focus on these joins if there are any potential chasm/Fan traps.Also I would like to know why should one refrain from implementing these recommended contexts.Does that cause confusion to the user when a report is generated?

Also isn't compulsory to make sure that all the joins are part of one of the contexts?

Edited by: Sridhar_MT on Dec 29, 2010 6:37 AM

[former_member142702]

Disadvantages when creating contexts without a specific need:

1) Readability: Having contexts into a universe that is used for ad-hoc reporting can be confusing for other people looking at it in the feature and wondering why all those contextes have been created.

2) Usability: If the proposed universes are created, this may cause a window to pop-up asking your power users to choose a context when creating specific queries or even generated the incompatible objects message.

3) Extendability: If you modify your universe in the future you have to make sure that the existing contexts (which are not really needed but are there) are complete and do not cause any side-effects (like the pop-up window or the error message).

My recommendation is the following: When you create a context in your universe make sure that it is complete and that it solves a specific problem.

Regards,

Stratos

[Former Member]

Thanks a lot for your advice.I'll implement based on these guidelines.