Oct 11 2010
Information Design Tool (Designer 4.0) Won’t Have an SDK
One of the more interesting (and disappointing) tidbits I got from the folks talking about the new semantic layer (the Information Design Tool) coming in 4.0 is that there won’t be an SDK in the initial release. There may be one coming later, but it will potentially be java based rather than VBA. That means that my VBA experience is going to be less useful, and tools like my Schema Change utility and the soon to be posted Universe Change Log script that I showed at the 2010 BusinessObjects User Conference will soon not only be obsolete but we won’t have a mechanism to replace them. 😯
While on the subject of the SDK… I was asked multiple times when I would be posting my script from the conference. I discovered a few days before the presentation was due that there is a problem with joins when switching from one database to another. For example, we are in the process of switching one of our larger datamarts from DB2 to Teradata. I am going to write a more detailed blog post on that shortly, but let me say that my universe compare script was very useful during the process. But during the compare process I found that this join:
table1.table_1_id = table2.table_2_id
Got changed to this:
table2.table_2_id = table1.table_1_id
Of course both joins are functionally the same. But to my script they showed up as three different changes. Table 1 was changed from “table1” to “table2” while Table 2 was changed in reverse. And of course the join logic was reversed as shown above. So while this was not really a change, my script was recognizing three unique differences between the two universes, all related to that one join. I had not encountered this when running against two different versions of the same universe pointing to the same database, which is the expected use of the tool. I created it primarily to compare the DEV and PROD versions of the same universe. But I am trying to think about a way to update the code so that inverted or reversed joins are not detected as changes. If I can’t come up with something in the next few weeks, I will go ahead and post the code as I demonstrated it at the conference last week.
Thank you for your dedication and time to share your knowledge.
Your session was one of the only several GOOD sessions at this conference, a lot of others did not have any demos or meaningful slides.
At it was pleasure to meat you after the session.
Thank you (spasibo)
Alex
Alex, spasibo is one of the few words that I do remember from Russia. 🙂 If you do the update for the short name and it works, would you please let me know? Thanks.
Will they not be putting out a .NET SDK with version 4.1? That seems to be the path they are going down. The initial release if Java only and the .NET stuff follows with version x.1.
John, it’s all speculation and rumor at this point (other than there won’t be an SDK for 4.0 which seems to be confirmed). I did not ask, and no information was volunteered about what was going to be coming from an SDK perspective. I am hoping to be able to get involved with the Semantic Layer Influence Council which could give me more insight as to what is going on.
Hello Dave,
I have no updates on how to modify the universe’s shortname (SI_SHORTNAME).
I did talked to few SAP and other conference participants about this. But no luck?
Even if we will find a solution via SDK, the bigger problem will be to deal with CR on top of the universe.
Bottom line do not create universe templates and then save them as multiple universes, because they will ALL have same short name.
Thank you,
Alex
Hi Dave,
I have a requirement. There are few fields in my universe which I need to restrict users from using these fields. I have hidden these fields in the universe which solved one part that users won’t be able to access them in new reports.
But the other part is exiting reports still have these fields and they can access them when they click on edit query. So I have implemented object level restriction, set it to restricted. Now the when I refresh the report with these objects I am getting an error and when I click on edit query it is removing those two objects and I don’t see them in Universe.
Is there a way to customize the error message, because when the users gets that error he the message should point him to me.
If the only work around is through SDK have you used that earlier. I am using Business Objects 3.1.
I am not sure if this is the right section to post the question.
Thank You
Sam
Sam, as you have discovered the object security restrictions are a binary process… you either get the object or you don’t. Hidden objects can continue to be used (if already on a report) but cannot be used for new work. What I have done in some cases like this in the past is to create a new object which will have security restrictions and then update the existing object to return a nonsense value such as zero for a numeric value or the phrase “Obsolete object” for a text object. Then I hide those objects.
That way when someone calls me with the observation that all of their numeric values are zero, I can add them to the security group with the new objects and help them remap their existing reports, but others who are not authorized to use those objects can be prevented from doing so.