For these tutorials, you need access to a SQL Server database.
Read the Getting Started guide for Ellie or Visual paradigm, depending on your choise of tool.
Before starting the tutorial, you may need to create the DS_DemoData database, which contains small batches of simulated raw data that the individual tutorial steps will need. During the tutorials, this data is pushed to the staging area of the DemoDW database that you are building, one batch at a time, and then immediately hashed and loaded. The D♯ Engine command for creating the database is found here: Help -> Tutorials -> Create Tutorial Data.
To build the tutorial model, a prepared Visual Paradigm model to be used as a starting point is located in your working directory, Workspace\ExternalModels\Training\Tutorial\DemoDW. When working on the tutorial, put all export and mapping files in this directory.
In most tutorials you expand the model in some way, because you want to incorporate new data into the DW. For the tutorials the steps to a working implementation could be:
- Look at the “new” data to be imported to the DW in the DS_DemoData database as described by the tutorial. For this, you can use SQL Server Management Studio or, once you have opened an export file from the modeling tool that contains server definitions, D♯ Engine’s Servers pane to navigate to the data and the Data Grid to browse it.
- Model the new data as Raw Model classes using Visual Paradigm or Ellie and export the model. Refresh D♯ Engine to incorporate the changes in the Conceptual Model.
- From the D♯ Engine’s Develop menu, create or open the appropriate mapping file. Locate and drag the columns you want to implement from the Server pane to the Mapping Editor. Complement the column descriptions manually with Primary Key and Foreign Key information.
- From the Conceptual Model pane, drag and drop the class properties to be mapped. Complement manually as needed. Save the mapping file.
- Finally, refresh the D♯ Engine project by selecting the File.Refresh Project command. This will re-read the modeling tool export file as well as the mapping files, and build the solution.
Also look here for a more visual description of the mapping process in the D♯ Engine UI.
You can do the modeling and mapping in whichever order you prefer. Some Tutorials encourage you to try out different methods, and you are free to oblige to or ignore the suggestions.
Most D♯ Engine scripts contain hardcoded SQL queries that assume class-, role- and attribute names to be exactly as modeled in the pre-existing material, so you want to get the model and mappings right.
Note: if you want to start again, you can just drop the DemoDW database manually and start over from Tutorial 1.
Tutorial Commands
The tutorials mention D♯ Engine UI commands by name. The location of the command in the menu structure is usually not mentioned, because the commands may be restructured at any time when new commands are added. If you have trouble finding the command, you can run the Help -> Command Reference command, which creates an up-to-date list of available commands and where to find them.
The D♯ Engine tutorial commands are located under Help -> Tutorials. Most of the tutorial steps open a SQL file containing queries relevant for the tutorial step, for example queries that show the source data of interest as well as the result of the load afterwards. It is beneficial to spend some time with these queries and learn the cause-and-effect relationships between the original source and the end result in the DW.
The tutorial commands create a *.sql file and then executes the file. If the sql file extension has been registered with a SQL tool, that tool will open, and the SQL code will be handled by the tool. In the D# tutorial environment, SQL Server Management Studio will open the file, and it is up to you to inspect it and execute it. If you want D♯ Engine to instead copy the SQL code to the clipboard so that you can paste it elsewhere, run the command SQL -> SQL Mode -> Set Mode: Clipboard.
