Overview Diagram Reference

Overview diagrams represents a logical structure of entities and the relationships among them. Each entity represents an object that is a natural part of and is important to the business and its business processes. Overview diagrams give us an overview of the relationships among these business objects.

Diagram Toolbar Buttons

Figure:  Overview Diagram toolbar

Overview Diagram toolbar contains different tools to modify and add artifacts to the Overview Diagram.

  1. Create New Entity
    Select button and click on an empty diagram area to create a new Entity and add to the Diagram
  2. Add Existing Entity
    Select button and click on an empty diagram area to add an existing Entity to the Diagram
  3. Create Utility Logical Unit
    Select button and click on an empty diagram area to add a Utility Logical Unit
  4. Add Existing Utility
    Select button and click on an empty diagram area to add an existing Utility to the Diagram
  5. Create Reference
    Select button and draw a Reference link between two Entities in the diagram
  6. Create Parent Association
    Select button and draw a Parent Association link between two Entities
  7. Create Dependency
    Select and draw a Dependency link between two Entities or between an Entity and a Utility LU
  8. Create Based-On Link
    Select and draw a BasedOn link between two Entities
  9. Add Note
    Adds a Note by selecting and clicking on an empty area in the diagram
  10. Add link from Note
    Select and draw a Note link between a Note and another diagram object

Context Menu Options Available In Overview Diagram Objects

Entity

Entity Association (Reference and Parent)

Entity BasedOn Link

Entity Attribute

Utility Logical Unit

Dependency Link

Note

Note Link

Diagram Context Menu

Adding Existing Entities From a Project

To add an Existing Entity within the same project:

Modification of Entity properties

Properties of an Entity, Entity Attribute and Entity links such as Reference/Parent Association/BasedOn can be modified through property sheets of each diagram object. To show the property sheets of a given diagram object you can choose the 'Properties' menu option in the Context menu of each diagram object type.

Please note that an Entity can be modified through the Overview Diagrams only if:

Missing Entities and Associations

Entities that represent Entity model files that are not currently available in the local disk or the model cache of the Database are marked in red. The links associated to these missing entities are also shown in red. In the case these Entities have been permanently deleted, users should take steps to delete these redundant diagram objects from the Overview Diagram by selecting the context menu action 'Remove from diagram'.

Invalid Links between Entities

Links of type Reference and Parent Association are denoted in red if these association types do not specify the correct Association Attributes in the property sheets. Association attributes are automatically mapped when drawing links of above types if attributes by the same name exist for the key columns of the participating Entity. However if no such matching attributes exist, users need to manually set them through the associations property sheet.

Entity State Machine Indicator

Entities that contain state machines are denoted with a special icon in their header section in the Overview Diagrams.

Figure:  Overview Diagram Example

This page is generated from IFS Developer Studio at 2021-08-13 08:40.