Skip to Content
0
Former Member
Mar 19, 2009 at 08:59 PM

Utility of Universes with SAP BI

25 Views

I would like to open up a general discussion regarding the use of Universes in an SAP BI environment. By the way, I am NOT an expert on Universes. I have worked almost exclusively with Crystal Reports in an SAP BW/BI environment, and as many of you may already know Crystal does not work with a Universe as a data source in an SAP BI environment.

So, when using a Universe based on an SAP BW query, what exactly are the benefits of using a Universe? In other words, it seems to me that all the usual work that is done in a Universe in a non-OLAP environment (denormalization, security, business logic, etc.) has aleady been done either at the cube or query level in SAP BI. So what is left to be done in the Universe? Now that SAP has bought this technology, are they planning on moving some/most/all of this functionality from the "back end" into the Universe?

What I'm getting at is this: when using Webi in an SAP BI environment, is it best practice to use the Universe simply as a "pass through" to the query, or does it make sense to add some functionality to the Universe on top of what's already in the query/cube? If so, when does it make sense? And what sort of functionality makes sense?