Flat Universe??

[samiam07]

I'm on the reporting team for a large corp and they have outsourced a new project that will involve us.

The project includes a new front end for the end users, a massive db backend (MS-SQL2005). They also include BOXi-R2 for report distribution/scheduling, etc.

We have been told that they will only provide us (reporting) with a flat universe for now because of time constrints.

My question is: What is a 'Flat' universe??????

The db developers/programmers do not communicate with us (we'll just the 'reporting team'), so they won't (can't?) define 'Flat' universe for us.

I'm open to any/all suggestions/comments/rumminations/utterings/shouts of joy/etc, etc, etc.

Thank you

 

[hilfy]

<soapbox>IMHO, this does NOT sound good. Universes need to be developed in conjunction with the the folks who will be designing the reports AND the folks who will be consuming them. If you want the universe to provide the data that will be needed for the reports that the users want, it CANNOT be imposed from "on high."</soapbox> (And I'm speaking as a developer here....)

I suspect that the universe will be based off of just data tables and that there will be no aggregation tables set up in the database, thus no aggregation awareness in the universe for doing calculations. However, I would directly ask the project manager (or whomever communicated this piece of information) what is meant by "flat" so that you don't have to make any assumptions when planning for your part of the project.

-Dell

A computer only does what you actually told it to do - not what you thought you told it to do.

 

[samiam07]

Update:

We have now been told that the structure of the Universe (which directly reflects the structure of the db) will not allow us to display data on our reports in rows.

Meaning:
Name, address, city, st, zip etc.

can easily be displayed in Webi reports in columns as:
Name
address
city
state
zip


but cannot be made/forced/tortured/mandated etc. to display as:
Name, address, state, state, zip

The only way to display the data in the format our clients/uses/management wants them, is to alias the main data table in the universe. This would require this table to be aliased approx 3,048 times. Once for each piece of possible data in the table. Which the universe 'designers' have said would be impractical.

I know, I know. This sounds like more of a rant than a question.

 

[hilfy]

Whoever designed the DB clearly was looking at their own ease in programming or ease of designing the db and NOT at how they were going to serve data to the users. I hate it when that happens!

If you'll post some information about the structure of the table, I may be able to make some suggestions.

-Dell

A computer only does what you actually told it to do - not what you thought you told it to do.