Business Objects  

DESIGNER 

DESIGNER is a Business Objects product intended specifically for you the universe designer. With DESIGNER, you can create universes, the semantic layer that isolates end users from the technical issues of the database structure.

As designer, you are responsible for creating universes, the Business Objects products metadata layer. This metadata layer is based on the paradigm of universes, classes, and objects.

A class is a logical grouping of objects within a universe.
An object is the most refined component in a universe. It maps to data or a derivation of data in the database.

For the purposes of multidimensional analysis, objects are qualified as one of three types: dimension, detail, or measure.

Dimension objects are the parameters for the analysis. Dimensions typically relate to a hierarchy such as geography, product, or time.
Detail objects provide a description of a dimension but are not the focus of the analysis.
Measure objects convey numeric information by which a dimension object can be measured.

For example, Sales Revenue is a measure object, Last Name and City Id are dimension objects, and Phone Number is a detail object.

The diagram below shows the relationship of universes, classes, and objects. 

The universes are called PERSONNEL, INVENTORY, and SALES. Within the SALES universe, there is a class called STATISTICS which contains two objects: Average Revenue and Total Profit. All universe components map to parts of the database structure.

DESIGNER can support any type of database schema including all those illustrated below. There is no need to redefine or optimize your database prior to using the product.

              source http://www.businessobjects.com