Business Objects deals with databases for every universe you need to specify a database connection. flat files dont have the database format so you'll need to convert them into some database. to do that you will need to write a procedure which will read data from flat files & relate it according to surrogate keys then using that procedure populate the database & then use that database for the source of the universe.

using flat files ONLY you can not create universe. because there is nothing as database connection available for flat file.

hope this solves your problem.

cheers

Pat.

Just one addition

if you are using only 1 flat file you can create a ODBC connection & in File DNS define ODBC Text Connection. this connection can be used for an universe to be created using flat file.

creating a universe for just a single flat file as per my knowledge & experience doesn't make sense. because you will need different dimensions fact tables & creation of which from single file is very tedious job. Apart from that Analytical reports are used for aggregated OLAP data that is huge in amount & 1 text or cvs file containing this data sounds practically imposible.

if you want to use that file for reports you can simply call it in BO Reporter when you are defining Data Provider & use it's data.

hope i have not created lot of ambiguity.

Cheers

Pat.