Universe Lock / Unlock Feature in IDT is available (4.2 SP5 onward) !!!
A long waited feature ” Lock / Unlock Universe” is available starting Business Objects Platform 4.2 SP05.
This feature was available with older versions of Universe Designer in UNV format universe but it was missing since the inception of UNX format universe ( in Information Design Tool). This posed a lot of challenges in collaboration among Universe designers who were working in a big team of Universe designers ( although the concept of project synchronisation existed for shared development environment but it couldn’t fully fulfil the need of having universe Lock / Unlock feature) . It was always a challenge to know who else is working on the same universe and when the last version the other designer had retrieved and when that person would be exporting the universe once his changes are done.
Now SAP has made this available in BO/BI Platform 4.2 SP5 🙂
This is how the help document for IDT in SP05 reads :
Locking universes : How to lock a universe so that no other user can modify it?
To prevent other users working on a universe that you are modifying, you can lock the universe. To lock the universe, right-click on the universe in the Repository Resources view and select Lock Universe. When a universe is locked, a padlock symbol is displayed next to the universe name in the Repository Resources view. The universe can only be unlocked by the person who locked it, or the Administrator. To unlock a universe, right-click it and select Unlock Universe.
Hopefully, this will ease out some pressure on universe designers, who are working in multi-universe -designer projects. 🙂
Cheers!
Ashish