Business Objects cardinalities

You need to setup cardinalities inorder to find loops and traps (fan trap & chasm trap).

[Cardinality expresses the minimum and maximum number of instances of an entity B that can be associated
with an instance of an entity A. The minimum and the maximum number of instances can be equal to 0, 1, or N.
Because a join represents a bidirectional relationship, it must always have two cardinalities. If you selected the
Detect cardinalities in joins options in the database tab of the Options dialog box, Designer detects and retrieves
the cardinalities of the joins. If you do not use this option, you can still retrieve the cardinalities for one or all
joins in the universe. There are two main methods for detecting or editing cardinalities: the Detect Cardinalities
command the Edit Join dialog box.

t is always advisable to manually assign cardinalities. Browse the database first , figure out cardinalities and then
apply the same manually. BOBJ can sometime take lot of time detect cardinalities as it traverse through
individual record to figure out cardinality.

If I needed to restrict a report to show the 50 most used contractors How would I
select the top 50?
You can add Alerters on top 50.Or you can use rank to rank top 50.

what is the difference between detect alias and detect context?

We should use Detect Aliases and Detect Contexts to formally identify and resolve loops.i.e.if a loop contains
only one lookup table then the loop can be resolved by detecting the alias.if a loop is having  2 or more fact
tables(multiple fact tables) then the loop can be resolved by detecting context
What is report template in B.O?
report Template is a specimen for your future reports.
You create a report from scratch, say make it Master-Detail Report with charts, put your company logo, add
some default colors(something like same colors your company uses for its documents, webpages etc.) & then
save it as BO Report Template file.
Next time when you are creating new reports, & select use Templates option, your report saved as template will
be listed in the box. If you select it, your new report will automatically use all color formats, & table-chart
structures, logo....whatever you used in your template report file.
Advantage : 1 time devaelopment of display & structure format, for multiple reports use. i.e. Time Saving. No
need of formatting for all standard reports. eport template is saved with .ret extension.
I have saved my reports in to a category. Now i want to modify all the reports with the
same change. So how can I change all the reports at a time? If I want to use a
template, how can I apply it to all the reports at once?
Can you please tell me you are talking about WEB-I or DESK-I because in DESK-I there is option of create
templates but not in WEB-I.
This is not possible in business objects If you have already developed all the reports you have to modify them
one-by-one. Though you can start with a template kind of a report to have same formatting in all the reports.
Yes after creating report also we can apply template which you wanted to apply but one report at a time at
desktop.
Go to Format-->Report-->Apply template.You will go to all report template and also you have a browser to your
own template.
It is shame business objects do not have templates. but at the same time, if we start creating templates we will
end up creating number of different templates for different reports. Template is to suggest that same font,
header, footer, block header etc are used. When it comes to practical /developing the report, we seem to fnd
that header height is not enough because number of prompts to be display are more than what default
templated can handle. So we start changing the height of headers. Again same applies to fonts as well. We
should ideally stick to standard font. but you have to bend the rules for business community."
Business Objects Syncronization
Syncronization in BO defines, method of creating synchronized query, if we find a loop or trap join error in the
schema, we go for context to resolve, at this time synchronized query will generate.ie based on the context path
the select statement will generate separately.
How do you apply ranking on crosstab ..? Is there any limit for rows and columns in
the crosstab
Slice Dice is a place where you can apply rank.
In the cross tab define the rank based on the lower level object you are pulling into the report. 
example: one country can have multiple states. One state can have multiple cities. If you are pulling all the three
objects (Country, state, cities) into report and want to define rank based on population then define the rank
based on cities.

In a cross Tab report, will you be able to insert a column on the right side of the
report? If yes, then how will it behave?
A coulmn can be entered in crosstab report, however it will insert seperate column for each value of columns.

can we save or create more than one universe in one repository.

Yes. We can create more than one universe or you can save the existing universe in different names.

Yes,we will be able to insert columns if the columns are compatible.

If we insert a detail/dimension,for each value of the column a new column appears.
If we insert a measure then we should ensure it has values corresponding to cross tab otherwise it displays sum
(of all values of the measure) for all rows.
How to filter repeatative values in the report to get distinct values.
Example: In any database we can use distinct command But My Report source is
flatfile.Therfore,I cann\'t manipulate source system.
Is there any command or function to filter repeating records/values in the report.
Using uery panel -> tab "Options" -> eliminate duplicates option.

One other way possible is by doing "No Duplicates" radio button in the Options of the data provider in the
Definition(the black cube) But sometimes in free-hand SQL reports it is not possible.
I suggest you use the break function as it filteres the distinct values.

[In some specific cases, one may want to display a value in one field (say in a folded report) but multiple values
come up (which could give you a COMPUTATION ERROR). To avoid such situation, one can define a variable
which would e the max of the original field required. That ways the same value is fetched and also only one
value is returned.]

I am working in Businessobjects report designer.

I had created one universe and also i generate reports using that universe.
But client want reports like Developer2000(D2k type reports user interact that user
select the value and generate rpt)
What exactly is that, before executing any report intially it is ask some
parameter, so, they want to select the parameter and generate that report.
I had apply prompts at the query panel, it ok that it is ask prompt 
to enter or select the list of valuse and generate the report.
Next when user open that existing report,it is open but not asking any prompt.
So,i want that information that how to create report, that once u existing report
it is ask some parameter(prompts)
Below are all different answers by diff people
1.You have to refresh the report so that u vl asked to enter again in the prompts box.

2. Go to Tools -->options-->save-->select refresh doc.while opening

3. when ever you slect the filter then select -->prompt-->select the " prompt with list of values".
4. UserResponse is the best way to approach this kind of situations...