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Impact Analysis

Find every universe, report and user affected before a database table or column is changed or dropped, so the change goes ahead without breaking reports.

Goal

A DBA plans to drop table INVOICE_001. Without impact analysis, report developers must ask around for days, the table stays, and unused database objects keep confusing data modelers. With MetaMiner you answer "who uses this table?" in minutes, from metadata MetaMiner has already collected.

Impact analysis means identifying which reports, universes, formulas, variables, users and groups are affected when a reusable part of the system, such as a database table, changes or disappears.

Who

BI administrators and report developers, working with the DBA who owns the change.

Before you begin

What MetaMiner traces

Content Traced to the database through
Universes (UNV, UNX) Tables, columns and joins of the universe
Web Intelligence documents Universe objects in each data provider, free-hand SQL and the generated data provider SQL
Crystal Reports Tables and fields, command text (custom SQL) and Business Views

TODO: confirm impact coverage for other content types

Confirm whether Analysis for Office, Lumira and Design Studio content appears in database impact results, and through which source types (BEx query, SAP HANA, Excel/CSV).

Steps

Find what uses the table

  1. In the MMC, open the Impact Analysis - DB tab. See Database Impact.
  2. Find the database, schema and table (or column) with the filter or search.
  3. Right-click the table and choose View Impacted Documents.
  4. Review the result: each universe and document that uses the table, with its folder.
  5. Export the list from the result window and send it to the DBA and report owners.

Image of the Impacted Database Objects window listing universes and documents for one table here

../images/use-cases/impact-db-impacted-documents.png

Check the universe side

  1. In the CMS Explorer, right-click an affected universe and choose Impact Analysis.
  2. Review which objects use the table and which documents use those objects.

Decide with usage data

  1. Open MM-W10 Object Use Overview or MM-D01 Activity and Data Source for the affected universes to see document activity.
  2. Or run IK-018 (UNX) or IK-019 (UNV) from the SQL Script Catalog in Meta Query.
  3. In the Web Console, the Blast Radius dashboard gives the same answer in a browser.

Expected result

A list of every universe object, Web Intelligence document and Crystal Report that depends on the table, with owners and recent usage. The DBA can drop unused tables and schedule changes for used ones with the report owners.

Variations

Next steps