Reverse-Engineering an SAP BusinessObjects Universe

PowerDesigner can reverse-engineer a SAP® BusinessObjects™ universe to a PDM for analysis and editing.

1. To prepare your universe for reverse-engineering, connect to your BusinessObjects server, right-click the universe in the Repository Resources browser, select Retrieve Universe, and specify a local project to retrieve it to.
2. To reverse-engineer the universe into an existing PDM, select Tools > SAP BusinessObjects > Reverse BusinessObjects Universe.

   or

   To reverse-engineer the universe and create a new PDM, select File > Reverse Engineer > SAP BusinessObjects Universe to open the New Physical Data Model dialog. Specify a model name, choose a DBMS from the list, and then click OK.

3. Navigate to and select the universe file in your BusinessObjects workspace, and then select from the following options as appropriate:

   Option	Description
   Reverse universe business layer	Deselect this option to reverse only the data foundation to produce a physical diagram. If this option is selected, you can select the following: Allow the creation of multiple facts - Instructs PowerDesigner to create multiple facts, each in its own multidimensional diagram if the universe contains various measures based on different table, Name columns from universe attributes - Instructs PowerDesigner to modify the names of database table columns if their associated dimension attributes are more human-readable. Column codes are not changed. Create dimensions from folder structure - Instructs PowerDesigner to build a dimension for each folder in the universe and add every item under it in this dimension.
   Enrich data foundation from source database	Reverse-engineers the tables, indexes and references that are selected in the data foundation from its associated database in order to obtain more information such as physical data type, additional columns, missing references, and physical options, to augment the information contained in the universe. Selecting this option will open a database connection dialog to allow you to connect to the database.
   Show Merge Dialog	[when reversing into an existing PDM] Specifies to display the Merge dialog even if there are no conflicts between the model and the server. By default the Merge dialog is displayed only if one or more objects contains conflicting changes on the BusinessObjects server and in the model.

4. Click Finish. PowerDesigner requests your BusinessObjects server username and password to open the universe for reverse-engineering.
   PowerDesigner creates tables, references, facts, and dimensions as appropriate in your model. Tables and references are displayed in a physical diagram, and each cube is displayed in its own multidimensional diagram, surrounded by its associated dimensions.