September 10-13, 2012

Orlando, Florida

Tips and Tricks of the Information Design Tool

Michael Welter, Claraview

Learning Points
Tips on converting UNV universes to UNX format
Little used features that might be useful
Best practices

Who am I?

Can I help
with your BO
issues?

Universe Conversion

UNV

UNX

Should universes be converted, or rebuilt?

There are several factors involved in making this decision

Universe Conversion
If you are using linked universes, you probably will want to
rebuild
Linked universes are not supported in UNX universes
Kernel universes are included in derived universes during conversion
Therefore, the benefits of using kernels is lost
Its better to rebuild, and use Business Layer Views

If you have large complex universes, you may want to convert

Youve already invested the development time

If you have poorly built universes, you should rebuild

No need to promote bad practices going forward

Of course, you still have the option to continue with your UNV
universes

Common Gotchas in Universe Conversion

Check all parameters and settings after conversion
Sometimes they change, though I havent seen this with SP04

Run the Integrity Checker after conversion

Make sure that all joins and objects still parse
Correct any issues

Speaking of the Integrity Checker

You can choose your Default settings for the Integrity Checker
Go to Window Preferences Information Design Tool
Check Integrity

While Were in Preferences . . .

You can define keyboard shortcuts . . . Lots of them

One More Thing in Preferences . . .

Have you noticed how annoying the join lines can be?

One More Thing in Preferences . . .

Maybe this will help . . .
In Preferences Information Design Tool Data Foundation
Editor Appearance

Welcome to the Family

Use Families to keep track of your tables
One family for each fact, and related tables
One family for conformed dimensions
One family for Alias tables
One family for Derived tables
You can use a comment box for a legend of colors
Be consistent with colors across all universes

Did You Know You Could Color Code Descriptions?

Thats right! Use HTML Tags to color code the descriptions of

objects.

Calculations can be Done in the Data Foundation

Rather than doing simple calculations in the Business Layer,
use Calculated Columns
This makes the calculations reusable with different Business Layers

NOTE: Calculated columns

can only use columns from
one table

Create LOVs and Parameters in the Data Foundation

LOVs and Parameters (Prompts) can be reused across
universes and folders
Create it once, use it many times
Data Foundation

Business Layer

Best Practices
A good universe has 300 to 500 objects, but may have up to
700 objects
This depends on the technical ability of the users

Unless you need a multi-source universe, create it as a

single-source universe
This avoids the overhead of using the Data Federation layer

Every object, without exception, should have a description

Descriptions must be in user friendly terms

Dont use underscores in anything seen by a user

Develop, and stick to, naming conventions
Document everything you do!
Someone else may need to continue your work

Best Practices
Use user friendly names for all universes, folders, and
objects
Have a team of power users check your work throughout
the development process
Create all LOVs from dimension tables, even if you have to
create them
Alternately, you can create static LOVs

Give LOVs meaningful names

This will help when troubleshooting LOV issues

Questions
Michael Welter
Sr. Professional Services Consultant
Claraview, a division of Teradata
Michael.Welter@Claraview.com
Twitter: @UniversePro
Blog: MichaelWelter.Wordpress.com

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