Hi,
The way you should do this is to have 4 different BO systems, Dev, Test, UAT and Prod.
Having this will allow you to use the same universe across all systems, but the connection to the database will be different on each system.
Not only will this allow you to smoothly report off different data sources, but you will also be able to upgrade and make configuration changes without impacting your production system.
Cheers,
Josh