An editor is a special type of view that enables you to edit data, define parameters, and configure settings. Editors contain menus and toolbars specific to that editor and can remain open across different perspectives. You can open entities in editors at any time to modify existing projects and elements. An asterisk in the editor title bar indicates that the changes you made in an editor are unsaved.
When working with Design Studio editors, see the following topics:
The Design Studio Workbench supports multiple open editors at any one time. You can define preferences to control editor behavior across a workspace. For example, you can define the number of open editors allowed to ensure that Design Studio does not run out of available resources.
To define Design Studio editor preferences:
From the Windows menu, select Preferences.
The Preferences dialog box appears.
Expand the General directory.
Click Editors.
The Editors preferences page appears. See the Eclipse Help for more information about the fields on this page.
(Optional) Select Close editors automatically.
(Optional) In the Number of opened editors before closing field, indicate the number of editors that can remain open at any one time.
The system automatically closes a previously opened editor if you exceed this number of open editors.
Click OK.
Design Studio saves your changes and closes the Preferences dialog box.
Design Studio editors are associated with entities. Many Design Studio views enable you to double-click on entities to open the entity in the associated editor. For example, you can double-click an entity in the Solution view or Studio Projects view to open the associated editor. Additionally, you can double click on table entries that reference entities to open the entity in the associated editor.
Note:
See the Eclipse Workbench User Guide for more information about associating editors with file types.You can open entity editors at any time to modify existing projects and elements.
To display the editor for a project or element:
From the Studio menu, select Show Design Perspective.
Click the Studio Projects tab.
The Studio Projects view appears.
Double-click a project or entity.
The editor associated with the entity appears, enabling you to view and edit the information. For example, if you double-click a Project entity, the entity opens in the Project editor (you can also double-click a project folder to open the Project entity in the Project editor).
Design Studio supports drag and drop functionality, enabling you to drag files or entities from the Studio Projects view to editors. Additionally, you can open an editor associated with an entity by dragging the entity from a view into the editor area.
When you have multiple editors open, select Navigate, then select Back to access a list of previously used editors (Alt key + e). Also, you can through the editor list by pressing the Alt key and the left arrow to return to a previously used editor and the Alt key and the right arrow to move back.
By default, the Studio Projects view is linked to the currently open editor. For example, closing or switching editors does not change the highlighted selection in the Studio Projects view. To always display in the Studio Projects view the file currently being edited, ensure that the Link to Editor button in the Studio Projects view toolbar is enabled.
Some Design Studio editors include a Notes button that you can use to attach documentation to an entity. For example, you can contribute content to Design Studio reports by writing your own internal documentation about entities and data elements, and you can format the documentation using plain text or simple HTML.
To define notes for an entity:
From the Studio Projects view, double-click an entity.
The entity opens in the appropriate editor.
Click the Notes button.
This button is located in the top right corner of Design Studio editors and is represented by a note pad, pencil, and lowercase letter "i" icon.
Enter information about the entity.
Do one of the following:
Press F2 to apply the changes.
Press Esc to close the text box without saving changes.
You can create read-only entities by changing the read-write property of the entity. Read-only entities can exist independently of sealed projects. For example, you can have read-only entities in unsealed projects, and sealing a project does not change any of the project entity read-write properties to read-only. When you define an entity's read-write property as read-only, the editor for that entity displays [Read-only] in the title bar.
To define read-write properties:
In the Studio Projects view, right-click the entity and select Properties.
The Properties dialog box appears.
In the left column, click Resource.
Select Read only.
Click Apply.
Click OK.
Design Studio prevents you from editing any of the data in the entity. To change the read-write property, deselect Read-only in the Properties for dialog box.
Some Design Studio editors include an editor help button that you can use to open the Help view. The view contains a list of topics relevant to the corresponding entity. You can use the Help view to review Design Studio Help without leaving the workbench.
The help button is located at the upper right corner of an editor and is represented by a question mark.
Design Studio guided assistance provides a range of context-sensitive learning aides mapped to specific editors and views in the user interface. For example, when working in editors, you can open the Guided Assistance dialog box for Help topics, cheat sheets, and recorded presentations that are applicable to that editor.
You can access guided assistance from the Design Studio toolbar, from the Studio menu, and in the Studio Projects view context menu. The Guided Assistance button in the toolbar is represented by a question mark and play button combination.
Cheat Sheets are XML documents that can be interpreted by the Eclipse Cheat Sheet framework to provide user assistance. For example, when developing design patterns, you can include a cheat sheet to describe the resources added to a workspace, and to assist users with any manual steps required after a design pattern is applied. Cheat sheets are not mandatory for design patterns, but recommended.
You can edit cheat sheets using any XML editor. Eclipse provides a Cheat Sheet editor that facilitates cheat sheet development.
For information about creating and developing cheat sheets, see "Building Cheat Sheets in Eclipse" on the Oracle Technology Network:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/entarch/eclipse-cheat-sheets-092351.html
This section describes editor tabs and functionality used by multiple Oracle Communication features. For information about tabs and functionality specific to a feature or entity, see the section of the Help for the editor type.
When working with common editors and functionality, see the following topics:
Some application editors utilize common Design Studio components to enable you configure entities by modeling a data tree to hierarchically represent all associated data elements. These common components facilitate the reuse of data elements within a modeling solution and provide tools for locating and using existing data elements.
These components consist of a data tree and a collection of supporting tabs. You can select a data element in the data tree to review and model details of the selected data element. Additionally, you can access a context menu from the data tree to perform various types of refactoring operations on the data elements.
You can define the manner in which run-time application users work with data elements by specifying a control type. Control types have specific options that define or limit the information stored for the data element:
| Control Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Text | Enables users to enter characters. The properties you specify for the text field data element determine what users can enter in the field.
This control type is available for elements defined with the following primitive data types: dateTime, decimal, double, float, hexBinary, string, and time. |
| Numeric | Enables users to enter integers.
This control type is available for elements defined with the following primitive data types: int and long. |
| Check Box | Provides a Boolean data type with true and false values.
This control type is available for boolean elements only. |
| Drop Down List | Displays a list of values. In Design Studio, you can define the possible values for the list in several different ways.
This control type is available for elements defined with the following primitive data types: decimal, double, float, hexBinary, int, long string, and time. |
| Calendar | Enables users to enter or select a date. The properties you specify for the data element define a range of valid dates and a default date.
This control type is available for elements defined with the date and dateTime primitive data types. |
| URL | Displays a URL.
This control type is available for string elements. |
Use the Details tab and the Attributes tab to define specific constraint values for the selected data element. You use the Attributes tab when working with conceptual model entities.
| Field | Use |
|---|---|
| Type or Source | Click the adjacent Select button to select a data element as the data type and to inherit from that base type. When working in the Data Schema editor, if the data element initially inherits data from a base type, click the Clear button to remove the link (on refresh, Design Studio removes the read-only data).
Click the label link to navigate to the base type of a data element (you can also double-click a data element to navigate to its base type, when defined). See "Leveraging Existing Data Information" and "Deriving from Base Type Elements" for more information. |
| Primitive Type | Displays the data type for simple data elements, and displays Structure for structured data elements. If this element inherits from a base type, this field displays the type of the base type.
Design Studio supports the following primitive data types:
Additionally, you can select Structure from the list to convert simple data elements to structures. Note: Design Studio clears the Type field if you change the Primitive Type field to a value that is not compatible with the base type. You can not change the Primitive Type field value when working in the Attributes tab of a conceptual model editor. |
| Name | Displays the name of the element as saved in the file system, given to the element at the time of creation. This field is ready-only. See "Refactoring Entities and Data Elements" for more information about changing data element names. |
| Display Name | Edit the data element display name. The Data Schema editor supports multiple languages for this field. The field adjacent to Display Name displays your language. You can define a Display Name field value for any language you select from the list.
If your preferences are set up to work in one language only, the system displays only the [default] option. See "Defining Language Preferences" for more information. |
| Path | Displays an XPath expression to define the location of the node in the schema relative to the root. This field is read-only. |
| Namespace | Identifies the namespace in which the selected data element exists, and identifies the version within the namespace, if applicable.
Every data element belongs to a single namespace. If the data element is inherited from a base element, the namespace of the base element appears in this field. |
| Multiplicity | Use these fields to define the data element cardinality. The Minimum field indicates the minimum number of times the data element can appear in an instance document, and the Maximum field indicates the maximum number of times the data element can appear.
When defining data element cardinality, you indicate whether the element is Required or Optional or whether there can be multiple occurrences of the element (Range). If you select Range, you can define the cardinality using one of the following configurations:
|
| Suppress | Select to suppress an inherited data element. Suppressed elements remain in the Data Elements area data tree but are not included in the parameter set.
This field is not available on the Attributes tab. |
| Abstract | Select to indicate that the data element is intended to be inherited and not referenced. If abstract data elements are referenced, a warning marker will appear in the Problems view.
This field appears only in the Schema editor and in data element creation dialog boxes. |
| Internal | Select to indicate that the data element cannot be used as a base type from which other elements inherit.
This field appears only in entity editors that can contribute to the Data Dictionary (for example, the Activation Atomic Action editor, the Inventory Specification editors, and the Inventory Configuration Specification editors). |
| Deprecated | Select to discourage use of the data element. If the data element is used, a warning marker will appear in the Problems view. Data elements can be marked as deprecated at any level of the hierarchy. |
| Sensitive | Select to protect the contents of a text or numeric data element that contains sensitive information. For example, select this option for fields that are used as password fields. |
| Length | Specify the minimum and maximum length of String and HexBinary data types. This field is read-only for data elements that inherit from a base type.
You must define the minimum and maximum lengths with a non-negative integer between 0 and 9999. Select Unbounded to define the maximum length as 9999. For HexBinary data types, you must define the length as an even integer. Design Studio generates an error marker if you define HexBinary types with odd-numbered minimum or maximum lengths. Note: Oracle Communications features may include application-specific limitations on the length, and may generate problem markers when a data element exceeds this limitation. For example, Oracle recommends that you do not define data elements tagged as characteristics with maximum length values greater than 255. Design Studio for Inventory stores all characteristic values as strings of length 255. Also, Design Studio for Order and Service Management does not support simple or structured data element length values greater than 1000 characters, except in specific circumstances (see OSM Developer's Guide for more information). |
| Unit | Displays the unit of measure. Click Unit to define a new unit of measure for any integer data element types. Click Select to select from existing units of measure. |
| Default | (Optional) Assign a default value for simple data elements. The default value must be of the same type as the data element. For example, if the data element is a String, the default value must be a String.
The length of the default value must be equal to or less than the value defined for the maximum length of the data element. |
Use the Enumerations tab to define sets of valid enumeration values for elements. Enumerations (also referred to as look-up or drop-down values) represent actual values that elements can take as valid values.
| Field | Use |
|---|---|
| Included table | Click the placeholder text inside the Code and Description columns to change the code name and description for the enumeration.
The value you enter in the Code field is stored in the database. The value you enter in the Description field is displayed to the user. Enumerations that are inherited from a base type are read-only. Click inside the Default column and select Yes to make the selected value the default value in the run-time environment. |
| Add | Click Add to add an enumeration for the data element you selected in the Included table. |
| Excluded table | Displays inherited enumerations that you want to exclude from the list of values in the run-time environment. Move enumerations between the Included and Excluded tables using the arrow buttons. Use this capability to display a subset of the inherited enumerations as valid values for the element in the run-time application. |
| Language | Specify the language in which to display the selected enumeration value.
Select a language in the adjacent field to create a different value for the selected language. If you create no specific value for a selected language, the default value is displayed. If your preferences are set up to work in one language only, the system displays only the [default] option. See "Defining Language Preferences" for more information. |
Use the Tags tab to characterize data elements with keywords. A set of tags is delivered with Design Studio. These tags cannot be inherited.
| Field | Use |
|---|---|
| Name | Displays the list of tags associated with this data element. |
| Remove | Click to remove the association of the selected tag. |
| Add | Click to associate a system-defined tag with the data element.
The following tags are available:
|
Use the Usage tab to review the projects and entities in which a data element is used. Additionally, this tab displays all references to a specified data element.
Use the Notes tab to add documentation to an entity or data element. For example, you can contribute content to Design Studio reports by writing your own internal documentation about entities and data elements, and you can format the documentation using plain text or simple HTML.
Design Studio supports multiple languages for this tab. The field at the top of this tab displays your list of languages. If your preferences are set up to work in one language only, the system displays only the [default] option. See "Defining Language Preferences" for more information.
Inherited data elements are read-only.
Use the Settings tab to configure the presentation of data elements in run-time applications.
| Field | Use |
|---|---|
| Display Name | Enter the field label that appears for the data element in the run-time application.
Design Studio supports multiple languages for this field. The adjacent field displays your language. You can define a value for any language you select from the list. If your preferences are set up to work in one language only, the system displays only the [default] option. See "Defining Language Preferences" for more information. |
| Tool Tip | Enter the text that appears for a data element when a user mouses over the corresponding field in a run-time application.
Design Studio supports multiple languages for this field. The adjacent field displays your language. You can define a value for any language you select from the list. If your preferences are set up to work in one language only, the system displays only the [default] option. See "Defining Language Preferences" for more information. |
| Control Type | Specify the manner in which run-time application users interact with the corresponding data element.
The values that are available in this field depend on the Primitive Type value defined for the data element on the "Details Tab or Attributes Tab". Additionally, the value that you select in this field determines the subsequent options that appear.
|
| Default Value | Enter a value to populate the data element with a default setting in a run-time application. |
| Required | Select if a user must enter information in this field when working in a run-time application. |
| Secret | Select to protect the contents of a text or numeric data element that contains sensitive information. For example, select this option for fields that are used as password fields.
When you select this option, the Default Value, Edit Mask, and Display Mask fields are disabled. Default values and masks are not supported for passwords. If the data element is marked as Sensitive on the Details subtab or on the Attributes subtab, the Secret option is not available. See "Details Tab or Attributes Tab" for more information. |
| Read Only | Select to make the data element a read-only field in the run-time environment. |
| Display Mask | Enter a mask to control how text in read-only fields is formatted and displayed in a run-time environment. You use Java regular expressions to define display masks. |
| Edit Mask | Enter a mask to control how text in editable fields is formatted and displayed in a run-time environment. You use Java regular expressions to define masks. |
| Case | Select the display format for text when the element appears in the run-time environment. You can format the text using all uppercase, all lowercase, or mixed case. |
| Numeric Range | Define a range of values (for example, 1-9) that a user can enter in the field. Select Unbounded to specify no limitations on the Upper value.
This option appears only when you select Numeric in the Control Type field. |
| Date Range | Select a date range between which the field values are valid.
This option appears only when you select Calendar in the Control Type field. |
| Sort | Select to sort the enumerations list by alphanumeric characters (strings) or by numeric characters (integers).
This option appears only when you select DropDown in the Control Type field. |