DSharp Studio Features

DSharp Studio is a Windows application. When starting the application, you’ll need to activate a license. If there are multiple licenses available to you, please select the one that fits your purpose.

The Modes

DSharp Studio has two Modes:

• Design Mode: build the model using the design tools available
• Run Mode: operate on the converted end result, the DW solution

After creating or opening a project, you will be in Design Mode, where you will work with your model and mappings. Once you are ready to run the model, you press the Play button to do so. At this point, your model will be validated, and if there are no critical errors, DSharp Studio will proceed to convert the model into a DW solution. Once that has happened, you enter Run Mode, where you can operate on the converted end result. In this mode, all design features will be disabled. To make further changes to your design, re-enter Design Mode by pressing the Stop button.

All commands operate on the current UI selection made in the active pane. Some commands work with only one element selected, others may need two or more elements selected. Some commands are adaptive, meaning they behave slightly differently depending on how many elements have been selected. Some commands disregard the selection entirely.

There are three aspects of the Selection to understand in order to take full advantage of the commands:

• Selected elements: a set containing every element that the user has individually selected in the UI. The number of Selected elements can be anything from zero upwards. If it is zero, there is no selection.
• Selected element: if the number of Selected elements is 1, that element will be the Selected element. If the number of Selected elements is anything else than 1, Selected element is nothing.
• Extended selection: A set of elements that contains every element in Selected elements, but also every descendant element that is a Class or a container (Model or Submodel) for each container in Selected elements. This applies to the Conceptual model branch in the Models tree. So just click on Conceptual model, and every Class in your model is contained in the Extended selection. Unleash commands!

Some Selection Examples

Each command operates on one and only one of these Selection aspects, and you can check it for each command in the command reference.

Some adaptive commands that work with a single element in the selection will usually repeat the same operation individually for all elements in the selection. Copy will put each element onto the object clipboard, and Set Archetype to Description will do the same thing for all classes in the extended selection.

Some adaptive commands that even in their simplest case need two elements to work (like those creating an association between existing classes) will usually also work with more than two selected elements. When applying such a command on a multiple selection, the first element selected is always the common element of what is usually a sequence of pairwise operations. For example, selecting 5 classes and running a command that creates a one-to-many association will create 4 new associations between selected element number 1 and 2, 1 and 3, 1 and 4 and finally 1 and 5, respectively.

In case of adaptive commands, the name of the command always reacts to the selection and will let you know which element is the target element, making it clear what is about to happen.

Feel free to experiment by making different selections and then observe how the command changes its name to reflect the selection and the action it is going to perform.

Once you have a project going, the default application layout looks like above.

• On the left side, the Models pane displays the Conceptual model and its submodels. Also, any generated models will appear here in Run Mode.
• On the right side, the Properties pane is used for modifying the selected element’s details (whether it’s a model, submodel, class, attribute, association, data connection or any other type of element). Actual editability of a specific property depends on the type of property and the state of the application.
• In the center is the main working area where more user action oriented content like the Model Editor will be shown.
• At the bottom, log, analysis results and other informational content appears.

While this layout is a tried-and-tested layout that works well for the intended purpose and natural workflow of this application, users can move the panes as they desire, even outside the application’s defined area. With a multiple monitor setup, it might, for example, in some cases be beneficial to pull some diagrams out of the application’s main window to a secondary monitor for quick reference while working on a submodel in the working area.

Generally, it can be stated that:

• The structure of the model is maintained in the Models pane (contents can also be referred to as hierarchy or tree view).
• The content of the model is maintained in the Model Editor. Note that almost all actions can also be performed in the Models pane, but since the tree view show all levels of submodels, while the Model editor only displays one at a time, some actions can be done in the Models pane that cannot be done in the Model Editor.
• The properties of model elements are viewed and edited in the Property pane.
• In addition to these, the menus and toolbars contain a myriad of usability-enhancing and time saving functions. The application also supports special input mechanisms such as Quick Input.

In the context of DSharp Studio Modeler 5.0, models and submodels are fundamental organizational units used to structure and manage the content of the model. Here’s an overview of how models and submodels function within the application.

Models

• A model in DSharp Studio Modeler represents a comprehensive conceptual framework designed to capture various aspects of a system, process, or domain. The Conceptual model is the model that is being built when you use the application.
• There is some specific need that drives the design of the model. That need defines what is and what is not important, ie what should and should not exist in the model, and what the appropriate granularity and overall detail level is.
• The model states what is true at any given moment.
• Technically and visually, the model serves as a container, organizing related elements that collectively define the structure and behavior of the modeled domain.

Submodels

• Submodels are hierarchical subdivisions within a larger model, enabling finer-grained organization and specialization of the model content.
• They allow for the segmentation of complex models into manageable sections, facilitating clearer representation and focused analysis of specific domains or subsystems.
• Submodels may encapsulate distinct functional areas, subsystems, or layers within the overall model architecture.

The relationship between models and submodels is analogous to the relationship between a whole and its parts. Models provide overarching context and structure, while submodels offer detailed perspectives and specialized representations within that context.

By leveraging submodels effectively, users can streamline the modeling process, enhance model clarity and comprehensibility, and accommodate diverse modeling requirements across various domains and contexts.

Power User tip: Build small submodels. There is no shame in even having just one class in a submodel. That usually signifies that it is a shared class that several other classes refer to, but it does not “belong” to any of those more than the others.

Power User tip: Use the Organize commands to keep the model structure.

After launching DSharp Studio Modeler, you can start working by:

• Creating a new project
• Opening an existing project
• Importing a project from a third party tool

Importing a third party tool project creates a new unsaved project. If you are using the full DSharp Studio, you can directly generate the DW from the imported model, provided that you also have the necessary mapping files.

You can only have one project open in DSharp Studio at a time. However, you can run multiple instances of it, should you need to work on several projects simultaneously.

Power User tip: if you are regularly working with one particular project, you can tick the Open last project on startup option in Application Settings.

Pressing Play will initiate DSharp Studio’s conversion process and the jump to Run Mode. The Analysis Engine will kick in and run an extensive analysis, this time including mappings. The Model Analysis pane will display any found issues.

• The model will need to be saved before running the model
• A full analysis will be run
  • There can be no critical errors among the classes selected for building the target model
  • There can be be no errors in the mapping files

Note that properties mapped from some sources but not others are not listed as mapping errors, as it is quite natural that a property simply is not available from all sources. However, if a property is part of a business key, it needs to be available and mapped from all sources the class is loaded from. Also, every modeled property needs to be mapped from at least one source.

Power User Tip: you can mark unmapped properties that you still want to keep around as Derived, in which case they fall out of scope from a mapping point of view

Run Mode focuses on getting your solution out there, as well as keeping it fit.

In Run Mode, no design features are available. You will, however, still work with the same objects you worked with in Design Mode, classes and submodels. The main idea behind DSharp Studio is that it is much easier to work on a higher abstraction level with less details than the actual real-world implementation, and that is exactly what the Conceptual model is to the generated physical model. So even though deploying the solution means deploying tables, views and stored procedures, in DSharp Studio you can still work only with classes. DSharp Studio knows what technical implementation lies behind the classes, and transforms your class-focused UI commands to the underlying target platform’s particular brand of SQL. Couldn’t be much simpler.

Run Mode gives you a set of commands related to installing and de-installing database objects, data loading and analysis, parametrization, SQL query generation, data browsing and tools for data related problem solving.

There are also some additional panes in Run Mode.