Table of Contents
SAP Business Objects Information Design Tool
Information Design Tool Overview
The information design tool is an SAP Business Objects metadata design environment that enables a designer to extract, define, and manipulate metadata from relational and OLAP sources to create and deploy SAP Business Objects universes.
- A universe is an organized collection of metadata objects that enable business users to analyse and report on corporate data in a non-technical language.
- A universe includes connections identifying the data sources so queries can be run on the data.
Universes created using the information design tool can be used by the following SAP Business Objects data analysis and reporting applications starting with version BI 4:
- SAP Business Objects Web Intelligence
- SAP Crystal Reports for Enterprise
- SAP Business Objects Explorer
- SAP Business Objects Dashboard Design
How to Create Universe ?
To enable the designer to create universes, the information design tool provides the resources necessary to do the following:
- Create connections to data sources.
- Extract a complete OLAP cube schema.
- Extract tables and joins to build a relational schema called a data foundation.
- Create metadata objects from the cube or the data foundation. These objects are contained and organized in a business layer. The SQL and MDX expressions within objects can be validated and queries run against the target databases to test the business layer.
- Share resources to allow multiple designers to work on the same resources concurrently.
- Publish a universe, which compiles the business layer, the data foundation, and the connections into a single universe file (.unx):
- Publish a universe to a repository to be implemented in deployments of SAP BusinessObjects data analysis and reporting applications.
- Publish a universe locally, to be implemented by client applications in standalone mode (for example Web Intelligence Rich Client).
- Create security profiles to define user access to universe data and metadata.
IDT over Universe Designer
- Universe design is managed in a project
- Components are compartmentalized into logical work spaces .
- Provides the ability of sharing and managing changes in the project for each component.
- Allows the retrieval of a universe from the central repository or locally.
- Allows the publishing of the universe to the central repository or locally.
- Allows the use of multiple connections.
- Allows the use of external files (excel) into the data foundation.
- Allows the use of one data foundation for multiple business layers.
- Allows for creating queries and viewing the results.
- Enhanced GUI with color highlights. (i.e. contexts are easier to follow)
- Allows for creation of subsets (views) of the data foundation.
IDT Resources
- Project
- Connection and Connection shortcut
- Data Foundation
- Business Layer
- Queries
- Parameters and lists of values
- Universe
- Security Profiles
