There have been a couple of issues discovered with my universe compare tool. One has been fixed in the code, and the other appears to be a universe issue which I have not been able to decide how to approach. An update to version 2.0.1 has been posted, so please download this updated version if you have been experiencing issues.
Context Issue
The first issue was rather generic. The message was Automation error: The server threw an exception. It seemed to happen while the code was looping through a collection of joins or contexts for some universes, although it had never happened to me during my usage. (Of course, isn’t that always the case?) One user was able to send me a copy of their universe for my testing and I was able to recreate the error which is always the first step towards a resolution. Continue reading “Dagira Change Log Utility 2.0.1 Released”
The long-awaited release of my universe compare tool has finally happened. 
Get it here.
Please post any support questions on the release page, and not on this blog post. The page will remain a permanent link on the top of my blog, while this post will eventually roll off of the front page. I hope that the utility proves to be useful, and that the wait was worth it. 
At the 2010 SAP BusinessObjects User Conference (also known as SBOUC) I did a presentation titled, “Don’t Lose Control: Change Management Strategies for Universe Designers.” The slides from this presentation are available as a PDF download on my conference presentations page or via a link at the end of this post. I said I would post a download link last week; I didn’t yet. 
It took longer than I expected to write up the documentation that I felt was required prior to the release. Part of that documentation has been extracted and published as this post instead as I don’t expect everyone will care or need to know about the background as to how this utility came about. However, it was important to me, so I wrote it.
Which brings up the philosophical question: if a blogger writes a post and nobody reads it, does it make the sound of one hand clapping? Or something like that… Continue reading “Universe Compare Tool – How It Came To Be”
This post details the system requirements and support plans for my universe compare tool which will be posted for downloading later this week. Comments are off for this post; any questions should be posted in the release topic, once it’s available.
System Requirements
Continue reading “System Requirements and Support Plans For Universe Compare Tool”
Wordpress (the software that powers this blog) is released under the GNU GPL license. So is phpBB, the board software used to run BOB. The essential purpose of the GPL license is to provide software authors the rights of copyright and to provide software users with the freedom to do whatever they want to with the software. There is a FAQ provided by the FSF (Free Software Foundation) that addresses many questions related to the GPL but I would like to call attention only to a few specific items.
I want to get credit for my work. I want people to know what I wrote. Can I still get credit if I use the GPL?
You can certainly get credit for the work. Part of releasing a program under the GPL is writing a copyright notice in your own name (assuming you are the copyright holder). The GPL requires all copies to carry an appropriate copyright notice.
Simply put, this means that even though I am releasing code under the GPL I still retain the copyright to the code. Releasing it under the GPL ensures that anyone who downloads the code for use has the right to do so, and that those rights cannot be removed by someone else. If someone were to download my code and modify or improve it in some way, then the modified / improved version must also be released under the GPL, so that everyone can benefit.
If I add a module to a GPL-covered program, do I have to use the GPL as the license for my module?
The GPL says that the whole combined program has to be released under the GPL. So your module has to be available for use under the GPL.
That restates what I was saying earlier. By releasing my code under the GPL it protects everyone. Someone could take my program and turn around and try to sell it, but anyone who buys a copy – even if there are improvements – has the right to then distribute the software for free. Code based on GPL software must be licensed under the GPL, which grants the user the right to decide what to do with it, not the owner of the copyright.
What does this have to do with anything? I just finished a project where I reworked a very large universe. During that project I used my universe comparison tool quite extensively, and I think the final testing is done. I will be posting a copy of the VBA code for download next week here on my blog. The software will include the GNU GPL license so that anyone is free to use it in any way they see fit.
Keep in mind that – unfortunately – there is already an expiration date on the software, as the BI 4.0 Information Design Tool does not initially ship with an SDK, and even when it does start to provide one it will likely be in java rather than visual basic. So enjoy it while it lasts.
I have had a number of questions or requests related to the release date for my universe compare tool that I demonstrated at the SAP BusinessObjects User Conference last month in Orlando. I am happy to report that I have almost completed the “digging out from under” process that occurs every year after the conference season, and hope to be able to finalize the initial release. All I have to do is remove the logic that checks for object incompatibilities (related to Aggregate Navigation) as large universes contain too much data to fit in a standard (old version) spreadsheet.
Once that is complete, I will release the initial version here on my blog. I anticipate at this time that I will be able to do this early in December. Thanks for your patience.
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.
I am happy to be able to (finally!) report that my universe “diff” tool (first mentioned a long time ago) is nearing completion. I have been using this partially completed tool on my own for many years, but the only things it compared were objects and predefined conditions. As such it was somewhat useful (mostly to me) but since it was not complete I did not release it even internally to my employer. When I started to extend the code to compare joins, tables, contexts, and other universe components I soon realized that the way I had originally written the code was not very modular. I was going to have to either write specific routines to compare each universe component, or go back and rewrite what I had in order to make it more generic. I didn’t do either of those things.
As of today I have completed the rewrite and am now going to extend the comparison to other universe components. I expect to have the final code ready to demonstrate (and release) during my talk Change Management Strategies For Universe Developers at the fall BusinessObjects conference. And of course once I release it there, I will also set up a way to download the code here on my blog.
Why use this tool rather than some of the other tools that are available? For one thing, it will be free. Free is good. It will be released under the GNU GPL license, which allows me to retain the copyright on the code while ensuring that the code can be distributed without restrictions. Support for the code will be on an “as time allows” basis here on my blog. For more details on the GNU GPL license (if you are not familiar with it) I have included a link at the end of this post. Basically it says that I retain copyright of the code, but anyone can use it however they see fit. So there are no restrictions on using it for personal or company use, and it can even be redistributed. The only requirement is that the code remains free of all restrictions and that my copyright information be retained in a visible fashion.
I’m excited to be able to finally complete this project. When I submitted the abstract for the conference I was hoping that it would get accepted, and that would be the incentive for me to get around to completing the code. It seems to have worked. Now all I have to do is complete my slides and get them submitted (a week late). I look forward to being able to share the results and the code in Orlando.
Related Links
The full client applications (Business Objects aka Desktop Intelligence) have had VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) for quite some time. The initial release of 4.x included a scripting language that was “like” VBA but was not quite the same. When 5.x was introduced they switched to Microsoft VBA. I have written more than a few VBA utilities over the years, some of which are published on the Integra Solutions library page. Today I want to share a utility that I put together to help migrate universes in a Teradata environment. I should point out that this utility does not require that you use Teradata; it can be used in any database environment where you need to do a mass-update to the owner or schema name.
Executive Summary
This utility is designed to automate the update of the schema or owner name in a universe. The host application is Microsoft Excel since the Universe Designer application cannot be a VBA host. You enter the “From” and “To” schema names into cells in the XLS and run the macro. At completion you will have a universe where the schema (or owner) has been updated.
Continue reading “Using the Designer SDK to Ease Migrations”
