Universes, Designer and Webi - I need to guidance pls 1

[eo]

Hi

We are investigating an analysis solution. We have been using Business Objects products (predominantly Crystal) for over 5 years.
Can anyone provide any guidance on how Universes, Designer and Webi fits into the bigger picture. For example:
Are seperate licences required for Universes, Designer and Webi?
Are Webi reports only built over Universes, or also OLAP cubes?
Are universes similar to OLAP cubes?
Any other advise, or at least pointing me in the right direction. The BOBJ site a bit confusing this this regard.

Many thanks.

EO
Hertfordshire, England

 

[blom0344]

First of all: Universes do NOT contain any data (pfew, that is always a difficult one to explain users)
A universe can be seen as the semantic layer by which database objects can be given trivial names, joins implemented (creating a datamodel) and new objects created.
So, OLAP cubes <> universes.

The licensing is based on what you intend to do. (at least it was) If you are going to build reports, create new universes and be a supervisor you need a full license.
If you are going to only refresh reports , then things are much cheaper.

Ties Blom

 

[hilfy]

We, too, are primarily using Crystal - I'm in the process of upgrading us from Seagate Info 7.5 to BO XIr2. In the second phase of our implementation (first phase is to get our current functionality up and running) we plan on providing ad-hoc report functionality through Webi, which means we will be building several universes.

A universe defines a specific set of tables, the joins between those tables, and various calculations. You then create a set of "Objects" that the users will use to create their reports. The objects refer to specific fields or formulas based on the tables and joins that you've defined for the universe. This means that your users can build reports without having to know anything about how the data is set up in the database, they just need to find the objects they need for the data they want to see.

If you're going to use Webi, I HIGHLY recommend taking the Universe Design class. There are a lot of things to think about when building a universe and a lot of potential "gotchas".

-Dell

A computer only does what you actually told it to do - not what you thought you told it to do.

 

[JohnLittle]

Hi eo,

Can you share here a bit of your experience with BOXIR2 implementation? I am very interested in OLAP in BOXIR2 (in case you do OLAP in MSSQL - ideally 2005 .
Thanx & Cheers,
jan