UDT vs. IDT Comparison

Both Universe Design tool and Information Design tool are a part of SAP BusinessObjects client tool. In older version of SAP BusinessObjects BOXI R3, BOXI R2, UDT was only tool to create semantic layer between database and reporting tool.

In BO 4.0, IDT was first introduced that allows the use of multisource enabled Universe for reporting. Prior to IDT, the only option to create multisource enabled Universe was the use of linked Universe. Linked Universes are used to share common components such as parameters, classes, objects, or joins from different data sources. From BO 4.x, both IDT and UDT are part of SAP BusinessObjecs client tools.

Key differences between UDT and IDT

In UDT, Universe are created with file extension as .unv. In IDT, Universe file extension is changed to .unx file. To open unv file in IDT, it cannot be directly opened, however, you can convert unv file to unx file to open in Information Design tool. You cannot open an IDT .unx file in Universe Design tool and cannot convert it to unv file.

Universe Design tool is single source enabled. IDT is multi source enabled which means the data can be extracted from different data sources while creating a Universe.