A SAP Business Objects Universe functions as a semantic layer and can be situated between the technical oriented database – often the data warehouse – and its business users.
This layer takes care of the translation of tables and columns to meaningful business terms in such a way that business users do not need to know any query language -such as SQL- towards the database. The semantic layer contains metadata about the table columns and their relationships within the underlying database. This layer is presented in a Universe by the use of classes and objects.
The universe is designed with the Business Objects Designer module and is being accessed by the Business Objects Reporter module to create reports.