User-Defined Objects

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User-defined objects (UDOs) are objects that a user creates. They are available only for the particular user and from the PC in which the objects were defined. The definitions for user-defined objects are stored in a local file in the universe folder as universe.udo, where universe is the name of the universe to which the objects belong. Because the objects are stored in a local file, they cannot be shared with other users and you cannot schedule documents that contain UDOs via the BCA. For this reason, I recommend keeping user-defined objects to a minimum and prefer that the universe designer create a common object or that you use a report formula or variable (see Chapter 13 for a discussion of where to build the intelligence).

A user-defined object gets converted to SQL, so any transformations or calculations are performed on the server. With report formulas and variables, the transformations and calculations occur on the local PC. For this reason, if the universe designer has not included certain objects in the universe, you may need to create a user-defined object to minimize the number of rows of data sent across the network. For example, let’s assume you want to get a count of the number of orders for each month. To use the BusinessObjects COUNTALL function in a report, you would need to retrieve all the individual orders. For companies with high order volumes, this may be millions of rows of data, and therefore, not possible. If you use the SQL COUNT function, then the server counts the number of orders and returns only one row per month.

You create a UDO by either selecting User Objects from within the Query Panel or selecting Tools | Universes, then selecting User Objects. Once you create a UDO, the objects are stored in a separate class, User objects. As the objects are universe-specific, you can reuse UDOs in multiple documents.

Similar to Report Variables and the Variable Editor (Chapter 18), the User Object dialog box has two tabs, a Definition tab in which you define the object name, type, and qualification as well as the Formula tab in which you apply the calculation or transformation, as shown in Figure 22-9. If you will be creating UDOs, I recommend reading Chapters 8 and 10 to understand some of the options here. If you designate an object to be a measure, you specify two aggregates: the projection aggregate that is used in the report calculations and the SQL aggregate that is used on the server. The projection aggregate is the function on the Definition tab. The SQL aggregate is the numeric function on the Formula tab.

Figure 22-9: A user-defined object

From the Formula tab, if you select the option Get Assistance On Functions, BusinessObjects will prompt you to enter any required parameters.

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