Indyco Support Center

This section of the documentation is dedicated to the web builder interface, a powerful platform designed to facilitate the creation, editing, and management of complex data models. Through an intuitive and organized interface, users can easily navigate between different projects, leveraging a wide range of tools and features to optimize the project development process. Whether starting a new project, exploring the structure of an existing model, adding entities and attributes, or defining complex relationships, this guide provides a detailed overview of how to effectively use each component of the interface.

To access the Web builder for logical modeling you must have the logical builder permission. After obtaining the permission you should see a new button in the top navbar in the home page:

Interface

The web builder interface is organized similarly to the desktop client and is composed of 5 main areas:

1. Main graph area: this is where you can interact to create and edit the model
2. Model: here the project structure is shown and can be expanded/collapsed for exploration
3. Properties: when you select an element from the model it's properties will be shown here
4. Validation summary: after every edit the validation engine will check for errors and warning. Those that arise will be shown here
5. Toolbar: Classic toolbar to access all the other functionalities, such as: Load/Save, import/export etc..
6. Main graph area controls: here the controls for the graph area are show, such as: centering the view, zoom, legend display, color display and the add entity button

Create/Open a project

In the toolbar section, below the File menu you can find the New project, Open and Import from DDL actions. When creating a new project you will be prompt for the project name. When opening a previous project you will be asked to provide a previously saved project. By clicking on Import from Ddl and providing a DDL file, a new project will be created with the logical model derived from the aforementioned file.

Entities

Entities in the graph are represented by the orange rectangles and there are different ways to create one:

• Right click anywhere in the main graph area
• Right click on the Logical Model label in the model area on the right
• Click on the Add entity button in main graph area controls

To delete an entity:

• Hover the entity and click the red bin icon
• Right click the entity name in the model area on the right

Attributes

Attributes are show inside the relative entities. To add a new attribute:

• Click on the Add attribute button inside each entity
• Right click the entity name in the model area on the right

To delete an attribute:

• Hover the attribute and click the red bin icon
• Right click the attribute name in the model area on the right

Relations

Relations are the connections between entities and attributes. To create one:

• Drag and drop from the link icon in the upper left corner of an entity
• Hover/Select an attribute and drag&drop from the link icon on the left of the attribute

The logical builder uses the direction of the relations to automatically determine the attributes that are Foreing Keys.

To delete a relation:

• Hover the relation and click the red bin icon

Element properties

Clicking an element (Entity, Attribute, Relation) will select it and its properties will be show in the properties area.

Entity properties:

• Name
• Description

Attributes properties:

• Name
• Description
• Type
• Primary key: if the attribute is part of the primary key of the entity

Relation properties:

• From/To configuration: Represents the start/end of the relation. You can also specify specific attributes involved in the relation. You can also specify if one side of the relation is optional
• Cardinality: Represents the cardinality of the relation, it can be one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, many-to-many.
• Role: Represents the role of the relation.

Each element also has some layout properties to customize it's appearance in the graph area.

You can enrich the properties for each element with custom properties as explained the the section below.

Custom properties

From the Tools menu in the toolbar section you can edit the custom properties definition for this project. When adding a new custom properties you can define the name, description, type, mode, item type and if it should be visible in the viewer:

• Name: Is the name of the custom property that will be shown in the properties section
• Description: A description for the custom property
• Type: The type of a custom property, it can be Text, List or Formula. In custom properties of type formula 
• Mode: If the property is optional or required
• Item type: Item types to witch the custom property applies
• Published on explorer: If the custom property should be visible in the model viewer

Advanced actions

Split entity

By hovering an entity you can click on the split icon to split the entity in 2 different ones. When splitting an entity a wizard will appear to move attributes between the old and the new entity.

Merge entities

To merge 2 entities you can simply drag one entity over the other. When dropping the entity you will need to provide a confirmation to exclude accidental merges. When merging 2 entities also the related relations will be merged and will start/arrive from the new merged entity.

Drag&Drop attributes to move between entities

You can simply drag and drop an attribute from an entity to the other to move it. When moving an attribute also related relations will be moved.

Sort attributes

To sort and reorder the attributes of an entity you can hover one and click on the edit icon. The sort entity attributes wizard will appear that allows you to reorder the attributes via drag&drop or by clicking the arrows at the end of every attribute.

Validation

The logical model engine includes different validation rules that will be checked after every edit. In case some error or warning should arise, those will be shown in the validation summary area. Also the total count of errors and warnings is shown in the bottom right corner of the window. By clicking an error/warning the containing element will be selected and centered in the view.

Note that some errors prevent the use of some functionality, such as import/export.

Import/Export

The export function allows you to export and Excel representation (dictionary) of the model so that you can massively edit the items properties or even delegate the edit to other people that do not have access to the logical builder.

When importing an excel the application will check it's structure and will try to match every row in the file by using the ID column. Only the rows available in the excel file will be affected by the import.

Note that it's important to maintain the original exported file structure to allow the application to import it correctly.

Saving

When  you are done with the edits you can save the project by using the File menu. It's also possible to export an image representation of the model to include in your documents.