General Settings and First Steps

Creating Node Instances

To create a new node instance, select the corresponding node in the Node Instances navigation and click the Add Node Instance pushbutton. The new node instance is displayed in the table editor and in the Node Instances navigation.

To open node instances that have been created before, click the pushbutton in the Node Instances navigation. Using this pushbutton you can choose from multiple options for finding the node instance you want to open. The options By Query and By Key are set as default options. You can also define more search options to load node instances. For example, if you want to find node instances of business objects shipped by SAP, you can choose the search option By Alternative Key. For more information about alternative keys, see Alternative Keys.

When you select a node instance in the table editor, the attributes and the values of the selected node instance are displayed in the Node Instance Editor. These attributes are the following:

Attribute	Description
KEY	A unique string consisting of numbers and characters by which the node instance is identified
PARENT_KEY	A unique string consisting of numbers and characters by which the parent node instance of the node instance is identified
ROOT_KEY	A unique string consisting of numbers and characters by which the root node instance of the node instance is identified
Other attributes	Attributes and values that are added and changed manually

You can use the values of the attributes being displayed in the node instance editor for naming node instances. If you want to specify how node instances are displayed in the Node Instances navigation, open the context menu of the root node or of an association and choose Start of the navigation path Show Next navigation step <attribute you want to be displayed> End of the navigation path . The node instances assigned to the selected root node or association are automatically renamed in the Node Instances navigation.

General Settings

If you click the Settings pushbutton, you can select the following display and test modes:

Name	Description
Show Keys	If you select this option, the key, the parent key, and the root key of the node instance are displayed in the table editor.
Apply Properties	If you select this option, the properties of attributes and entities are incorporated during the test session. If you do not select this option, you can test the function of fields while disregarding the properties you have set for attributes and entities. Example A field with the property Readonly becomes editable when the option Apply Properties is deselected.
Show Change History	If you select this option, all changes made during the test session are displayed in a panel. To display the changes in the panel, you must press `Enter` to trigger a roundtrip. Note Changes being displayed in the panel are not stored. As soon as you clear or close the transaction, the change log is removed from the change history panel.