Single Universe vs Multiple Universes?

[Former Member]

Hi Universe Gurus,

Our client requires Sales, Inventory and Purchases information to be analyzed in BOBJ EDGE 3.1.

We are deciding whether to use a single Universe with three classes (Sales, Inventory and Purchasing) or three separate Universes (one for each area).

In particular, this is because tables (and hence objects) for articles, employees etc. would be used in queries of all three areas.

In your project experience, what are the pros and cons for either choice? How would they affect the usability of Dashboards and Explorer in particular?

Looking forward to your views.

[Former Member]

Hello Jim,

The best practices recommended by SAP suggests that if your universe size is bigger than 1MB, then divide it into multiple universes. This is because equal amount of RAM gets utilized as per size of your universe.

Moreover, the decision to split the universe depends upon number of factors like your schema design, development strategy, etc.

Regards,

Chinmay Athavale

[Former Member]

Universe size is certainly not the first criteria that I would use.

Universes are supposed to cover a functional area. What you need to find out is, how many times will people need to combine data (objects) from those 3 areas? If seldom, then make 3 universes. If it's done all the time, then see what you can do to put them together.

[Former Member]

I'm going to have to go with Dave here. It's the functional aspect of it that counts. If your business actively needs to look at/analyse data across these three units (finance, sales etc)...then there really is no question, that you need to put them all in the same Universe.

However if what you have is 3 seperate business units, doing their own thing in their own time- best to maintain three different universes for each of them.

Plus when the change requests come in, it makes it easier to live with. For eg. Finance want their Calendar Date in one specific format, while Sales don't. Fun times!