Working with relationship data

An important feature of Relationship Manager is its ability to access and manipulate relationship runtime data contained in the relationship tables. This section describes how to use Relationship Manager to manipulate and access runtime data.

Searching for participants

You can search for participant instances based on different criteria. Depending on how specific your search criteria is, your searches can locate a unique participant instance or a group of participant instances. You can find participant instances in the following ways:

Finding instances by business object

This option searches for instances whose data type is an attribute in a business object.

Do the following to search for instances by business object:

  1. Select a participant instance in Relationship Manager.
  2. Select Edit > Find Instances by Business Object from the menu bar.

    Relationship Manager displays the "Participant" window, as shown in Figure 47.

  3. Type the participant value by which you want to search in the Value cell.
  4. Click OK.

    Relationship Manager displays any matching instances in a dialog box.

  5. Double-click any of the instances in the dialog displayed by Relationship Manager to navigate to and highlight the instance.

Finding instances by data

This option searches for instances whose type is Data.

Do the following to search for instances by data:

  1. Select a participant instance in Relationship Manager.
  2. Select Edit > Find Instances by Data from the menu bar.

    Relationship Manager displays the "Find Instances by Data" window, as shown in Figure 48.

    Figure 48. Finding instances by data


  3. Type the participant value by which you want to search in the Enter the data cell.
  4. Click OK.

    Relationship Manager displays any matching instances in a dialog box.

  5. Double-click any of the instances in the dialog displayed by Relationship Manager to navigate to and highlight the instance.

Filtering the displayed participants

You can filter the participants to only display those created or modified between certain dates. Do the following to filter the displayed participants:

  1. Select a participant in Relationship Manager.
  2. Select View > Filter from the menu bar.

    Relationship Manager displays the "Filter" dialog, as shown in

    Figure 49. Filtering participant results


  3. In the "Filter" dialog, enter the earliest date of creation or modification for the participant in the from field and the latest date of creation or modification for the participant in the to field.

    Use the following techniques to enter the date value:

  4. Click the Include inactive participants as well checkbox if you want to include inactive participants in the resulting display.
  5. Click OK.

    Relationship Manager displays the history of activity for the filtered interval in the "Filter Results" dialog. The filtered display includes inactive participants if the Include inactive participants as well option box is checked. Figure 50 shows the "Filter Results" dialog.

    Figure 50. Viewing filtered participant data


Cleaning up participants

Do the following to clean up participants due to inconsistent or corrupt data in the source application or generic object:

  1. Select a participant in Relationship Manager.
  2. Select View > Clean Up Participants from the menu bar.

    Relationship Manager displays the "Clean up Participants" dialog, as shown in Figure 51.

    Figure 51. Cleaning up participants


  3. In the "Clean Up Participants" dialog box, enter the date to which you want to revert the participant values to in the Clean up from field.

    Use the following techniques to enter the date value:

  4. Click OK.

    All participant adds, deactivations, and activations since that point in time are erased from the database. A participant that has been deleted or whose value has been modified cannot be cleaned up.

Printing relationship data

Relationship Manager allows you to print information about a relationship's runtime data. It creates a tree representation of the runtime data, much like the data appears in the tool's main window. You can manage the printing of this output tree with the following print features:

Sending relationship data to a printer

The printing ability of Relationship Manager sends the current contents of the relationship tree in the main window to the printer. Do the following to print relationship runtime data:

  1. Expand the relationship tree of Relationship Manager so that the information you want to print is displayed.
  2. Print relationship runtime data in any of the following ways:

Using Print Preview with relationship data

Do the following to preview the output of relationship data as it would be printed:

  1. Expand the relationship tree of Relationship Manager so that the information you want to print is displayed.
  2. Initiate the print preview in any of the following ways:

Setting up the page

Relationship Manager tries to print the output tree as it appears in the tool's main window. If the output tree is narrow enough to fit on the page, you do not need to take any special formatting tasks. If, however, the output tree does not fit on the page, you can set formatting options to change the layout of the output tree so that it fits on the page.

You can set up the print format with the "Print Page Setup" feature, which you initiate in any of the following ways:

Any of these commands invokes the "Print Page Setup" dialog.

From the "Print Page Setup" dialog, you can provide the following formatting information:


Table 19. Column formatting options

Column formatting option Description
Column headers on every page When this option is enabled, the column headers (such as Relation, Type, Value) appear on every page, not just the first one.
Resize columns to fit all data When this option is enabled, Relationship Manager attempts to enlarge each column to fit any strings wider than the column itself. If the resulting tree does not fit onto the printed page, Relationship Manager tries to eliminate any extra room inside the columns. If this field and its subfields are greyed out, their values indicate the default values that Relationship Manager uses when formatting the output tree. Leave these fields in their greyed-out state if you want to confirm the formatting every time Relationship Manager generates the output tree. If you activate these fields, Relationship Manager uses the options you set for every output tree it generates.

Use smaller font if necessary When this option is enabled, Relationship Manager tries to reduce the font size if data is still larger than the page. It reduces font size in three steps. At each step, it reduces the font size by 20%.

Confirm new font size When this option is enabled, Relationship Manager prompts you to choose how to continue when it has reduced the font size sufficiently to fit the output tree on a page. It provides you with the following choices:
  • Print with this font
  • Restore and print with the original font size
  • Cancel printing
In the process of reducing font size, this size can become as small as half the original size. If this option is disabled, printing starts when Relationship Manager finds a font size that fits the output tree on a page.

If altered during print/preview, adjust column widths When this option is enabled, Relationship Manager saves any changes to the column sizes that it has made to get the output tree to fit on a page. It uses the saved settings for future printings of the output tree.

The Resize columns to fit data field and its associated subfields indicate the actions that Relationship Manager takes when it formats the output tree. These fields can appear in one of three states:

As Table 19 indicates, these fields initially display in a greyed-out state. You can set these fields from the confirmation dialogs that display during the formatting process. For example, if the values in a column do not fit in the current width of this column, Relationship Manager displays a confirmation dialog with the Yes and No options and a Make this the default choice field. If you select the Make this the default choice check box, Relationship Manager sets the Resize columns to fit data field based on the option you have selected from the confirmation dialog, as follows:

Copyright IBM Corp. 2004