Logical types, logical instances, and artifacts

Dashboards are supported by logical hierarchies made up of the following:

The logical hierarchy is typically created with the dashboard wizard, but if a dashboard is not required, logical types can be managed through the Logical Types tab.

Refer to Working with the Dashboard Wizard for details on how to create the logical hierarchy using the dashboard wizard.

Related topics

Views-and-dashboards

Working-with-views-and-dashboards

Using

Logical types

The Logical Types tab enables you to manage logical types, which typically represent a business process or application type. A logical type is the top-level container of the logical hierarchy and it contains artifacts and nothing else. Logical Types created from the dashboard wizard are not displayed in this tab; only logical types created within this tab itself are shown. Dashboard templates are displayed in the Operations tab, within the Logical tree, along with all logical types created in the Logical Types tab.

The terms logical hierarchy and logical type are used synonymously.

logicalType.png

Artifacts

A logical type is made up of one or more artifacts. An artifact consists of a physical object type and a subset of attributes of that type. When associated with a physical object the artifact's attributes define the data available to be displayed in a view.

Note

Artifacts are connected to a logical type, so you cannot have a global artifact per se. You can, however, create a global artifact logical type with all of the artifacts you would like. Then create a global artifact logical instance with the right artifact associations. From this logical instance, you can copy the global artifacts to a new logical instance.

Logical instances

A logical instance is a specific implementation of a logical type. A logical instance contains associations between its artifacts and physical objects.

The logical instance inherits all the artifacts and attributes of the parent logical type. The associations to the physical object attributes give the logical instance artifacts their data values.

logicalInstances.png

There can be one or more logical instances of the same logical type. If the logical type is changed, the change is reflected in all instances owned by the logical type. Changes to a logical type can also affect the associated logical view.
Logical instances must share common artifacts though not all of the artifacts must appear in all instances.

 

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