Universe design - preventing duplicate objects

Question

Scenario: Each case can contain a parent and a child. So we have a CASE MEMBER table with columns CaseID, MemberID, and Role, where Role tells us if the member is a parent or child. We also have a DEMOGRAPHICS table that has about 100 different fields related to a MemberID (SSN, name, etc).

Users should have objects for Parent MemberID and Child MemberID, but should also be able to search all members to see a list of cases and what their role is on each. In this situation, they should also be able to view any required demographic information.

So that gives me two styles of reports which view the same data:

1) Case ID, Parent Member ID, Parent SSN, Child Member ID, Child SSN

2) Member ID, Role, SSN

How can I provide for both of these scenarios without creating 3 objects for each demographic field? I don't want to create "Parent SSN", "Child SSN", and "Generic Member SSN" objects, and repeat that 100 times.

Using BO XI 3.1.

Answer 1

I recommend biting the bullet and duplicating the objects. It will be additional universe development, but the benefits are worthwhile. Here's why:

• The universe will be user-friendly. You'll have classes for "Case Info", "Parent Member", "Child Member", and "Generic Member". Your users can pick objects from the first three classes to easily create your scenario 1 report. And the scenario 2 report can be built from the "Generic Member" class.
• Creating the scenario 1 report without aliasing the DEMOGRAPHICS table and duplicating the objects would require that the logic be built into the report rather than the universe. So you would need to have report variables like =Max([SSN]) Where ([Role]="Parent"]). It gets the job done, but your users would need to know this syntax and create the variables in each report.

There are tools available on the BOB forum (http://www.forumtopics.com/busobj) that can reduce the work required for batch universe changes such as this.