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What are Universes?
Universes present the information stored in your company’s databases in a very organized
manner. They allow access to this information, without the user having to be an expert in relational database structure. Universes are the most popular and versatile methods of retrieving data for a document. The use of universes is what makes BusinessObjects truly powerful and easy to use. A universe contains no data itself. However, it stores the instructions on how to retrieve data from some data source, such as a database. Universes are simply
computer files that are stored in a repository. A repository is a database that stores, among other things, the universe definitions. When you select a universe from the list, BusinessObjects will copy the universe file from the repository to your local hard drive. Once the universe file is copied onto the hard drive, BusinessObjects will use this file to create the SQL instructions to retrieve the information for your reports. The next time the same universe is used to create a report, BusinessObjects will check the repository to see if the latest version of
the universe is on your computer. If the latest version is not on your computer,
BusinessObjects will copy the latest version from the repository.
If you use the same universe to create most of your reports, then it is sometimes
convenient to check the Set as My Default Universe option located beneath the
list of available universes. This option allows you to skip the universe selection
steps so far discussed, when creating new documents.
What are Dimensions?
Dimensions usually represent the nouns in our database. For example,
dimensions can represent employee ID’s, car models, company
stocks, dates, etc. We usually total on dimensions. For example, we
may want to know the sales volume for a certain date, the number of
new employees in a given month, or the total value of the stocks in a
portfolio.
What are Details?
Details are objects that represent attributes of dimension data. Typically,
we will not subtotal or organize data around a detail object.
For example, a detail could be the weight of a product or a person’s
first name.
What is Measure?
Measure objects generally represent aggregated data. Typical measure
objects may sum, count, max, min or average. For example, a
measure object may sum the daily earnings in a given time period or
count the number of employees in a department.
What is condition?
Condition objects allow information in a document to be limited to
defined values. These objects may have predefined condition values
or they may prompt the user to enter a value. For example, a condition
object may limit the data in a document to a certain year.
Business object notes:
In version 6.x, BusinessObjects started saving documents within the UserDocs
directory in the My BusinessObjects Documents directory, which is located in
the My Documents directory.
Saving a Document to a Microsoft Excel File (Version 6.x)
A new feature introduced with BusinessObjects version 6.0, is saving a file to a Microsoft
Excel file. This option allows you to create a report in BusinessObjects and then simply save it
to an MS Excel format. Then, the file can be shared with all other MS Excel users.
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