I did a fun presentation (at least I had fun) at the New York user group a few years back. I found the original download package and have posted it on the presentations page on this site. The download package includes the presentation in Adobe PDF format, several universes, some Microsoft Access database files, some sample reports… basically everything you need to go through the slides and review the examples.
There is a “readme” file that contains notes on how to get everything working. The reports and universes were originally built in version 5, but should be usable in any current version (up through XI 3.1 as I type this). The demonstration reports were all built in Desktop Intelligence.
The other day I was talking to someone about contexts in a universe and they offered the typical response. You probably know the one… it says that you should set up one context per fact table. If you read many posts on BOB then you’ll see that phrase quoted quite a bit. The question is: Is this the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
No, it is not.
Continue reading “Is “One Context Per Fact Table” a True Statement?”
A few days ago I finally got started on what will become a series of posts about fan and chasm traps. The post was “Do I Have a Fan Trap?” and it included a definition of a fan trap in a universe and showed a basic solution. However, it also mentioned that the basic solution would not work in most cases, and that contexts would be required for a more complete solution. If you are new to the Universe Designer, or even if you just have not worked with contexts that much, the first step is understanding exactly what a context does for you. That is what I hope to do with this post.
Continue reading “What Is a Context Anyway?”
I started to write this a long time ago, but a few things (okay, lots of things) got in the way. I did manage to write a brief introduction a while back but that’s as far as it got. So today I want to write at least a little bit more about fan traps in particular.
Continue reading “Do I Have a Fan Trap?”
Designer is one of my favorite parts of the Business Objects product suite. I enjoy creating universes and solving the challenges that occur during that process. If you have worked with Designer yourself then you probably know that there are several different types of challenges that occur fairly frequently… so frequently, in fact, that we have names for them. They are Chasm Traps and Fan Traps. I plan to describe each of those traps in this post. I will provide various different solutions (some standard, some not so much) for each in future blog posts.
Continue reading “Designer SQL Traps”
