Visualizing Tables, MVS Files, and Relationships

The Visualization feature allows users to observe the objects and relationships that can be included in a Related Extract or Application Relationship (AR) specification in an easier to comprehend way than by analyzing the tabular data shown in the Objects tab and Relationships tab.

Important

The visualization diagram is provided only as a convenient way of viewing and navigating the specification. It is not stored within the specification or in the File-AID repository and not intended to be preserved for future use. Any changes to the visualization layout will be lost after the specification is closed.

The visualization drawing is automatically generated or updated whenever the extract definition changes, such as the following:

Driving Object selection (Related Extract only)
Discovery execution (Related Extract only)
Changes in the DPSI settings (that include the Direct, Parent, Siblings and Indirect options for traversing the related data) (Related Extract only)
Changes to the inclusion or exclusion of objects, based on the user’s actions on the Objects tab
Changes to the inclusion or exclusion of relationships, based on the user’s actions on the Relationships tab

The visualization diagram represents the database objects (tables) and their relationships shown in the form of oriented graphs. The objects are presented as nodes and the relationships are presented as edges (connecting arrows).

MVS Files/Tables are displayed as rectangular labels containing the node’s name, which contains the schema name and the table name separated by a dot.

The driving object (Related Extract only) is shown with a thick green border.
Objects with complete metadata are shown with a thin border.
Objects with incomplete metadata (primarily present in legacy specifications) are shown with a thin, hyphenated border.
The currently selected object is shown with a thick blue border.
Unrelated objects are shown in a light gray color.
The objects excluded from the extract are shown in a dark gray color.

Relationships are shown as arrows, as follows:

Referential Integrity (RI) relationships included in the Related Extract specification are shown as solid blue arrows.
Application Relationships (AR) included in the Related Extract or AR specification are shown as dashed blue arrows.
Excluded relationships are shown as solid (for RI) or dashed (for AR) gray arrows.
The currently selected relationship is shown as a thick arrow.

Important

Note: Selection of the objects and/or relationships in an AR specification provides functionality such as adding, deleting, and editing relationships and objects.

Do any of the following operations on the Visualization tab:

To move objects within the graphic

Use drag-and-drop, to make it easier to comprehend the view.

To expand/collapse nodes

Use the triangle to expand or collapse any node on the diagram to see or hide its fields.

expands to:

To zoom and scale the diagram

Use the toolbar controls to zoom and scale the diagram.

The left value is the scaling factor, which moves the diagram closer to the viewer. The second value selects the zoom level to quickly zoom in or out of the current visualization, or to fit it into the current size (width, height or page) of the containing editor.

To exclude tables or relationships from the diagram

Right-click the node or link and selecting Exclude. The visualization diagram is updated with the selected items disabled. Including or excluding a relationship between a parent and its dependent table can, depending on the relationship chase, cause other relationships and tables to become unreachable.