Relationship Editor 

Definition

A user interface of the NetWeaver portal by which relations between business objects can be mapped, viewed, and modified.

Use

The navigation path for accessing the Relationship Editor is Content Administration ® Unification. Then, right-clicking any folder in the Portal Content Catalog displays a context menu in which you choose Relationship Editor.

Uses of the Relationship Editor

Mapping relations	Allows you to map relations between objects by adding business objects to the Relationship Editor matrix as source or target objects.
Viewing relations	The Relationship Editor turns to the relation resolving service for the information to display in the matrix at the crossing of source and target objects. The Relationship Editor displays whether or not a relation exists, and if so, if it is a direct relation based in the back-end application, a manual relation edited by the content administrator, or an autocomplete relation, computed on-the-fly by the unification autocomplete service. If a relation appears to be empty, it may be because there is no direct relation between the objects and the autocomplete service has not been activated, or because no relation may exist at all between some pairs of objects.If this is because a direct relation was deleted, this is indicated in the tooltip.
Modifying relations	The Single Relation Editor, is a powerful sub-editor of the Relationship Editor, taking full advantage of the unification relation resolving service. The ability to fine tune relations, changing the relational path along which Drag&Relate query results are returned, ensures that the most relevant information to the business needs of portal users is received during runtime.

Before using the Relationship Editor, you have imported into the business object folder of the Portal Content Catalog, from available back-end systems, as many of the business objects as necessary to provide the user roles in your organization with the business information base they require to do their jobs.

For detailed information about importing business objects, see Business Objects Importer.

The Relationship Editor does not check the logic of the relations you map or define, nor the performance of data navigation based upon those relations. Therefore, carefully plan and test new relationships and modifications to existing ones before implementing them.

Structure

After choosing Relationship Editor from the context menu in the Portal Content Catalog, the Relationship Editor opens in the work area of the portal.

The Relationship Matrix

The main area of the editor is dedicated to displaying a matrix of source and target objects. When opened for the first time, the source and target headings are visible in the upper left corner of this area. Objects are added from the Business Object folder of the Portal Content Catalog.

The meeting point of two objects in the matrix displays details about the relationship of the source and target objects:

·        An icon indicates the type of relation. See the legend.

·        tooltip, activated by hovering the mouse pointer over the relevant square on the matrix, gives details of the relation:

¡        the type of relation

¡        the names of the constituent source and target objects, and in parentheses, the name of the respective objects as used in the Distributed Query Engine (DQE).

Empty Relation

If no relation exists between any two objects, their meeting point in the matrix is empty and the tooltip for the meeting point indicates that the relation is empty and details the constituent objects.

The tooltip for an empty relation also indicates if this is because a direct relation between the objects has been deleted during editing. See the Single Relation Editor.

Add Business Objects to the Matrix

You can add objects to the relationship matrix by right-clicking an object from the collection of business objects imported to the Business Object folder, and choosing either Add as source or Add as target.

Icon Legend

To the right of the matrix area the legend displays the icons that appear in the relationship matrix area, representing foreign key, manual, and automatic relations. For more detailed information on these relation types, see Relation Resolving.

An additional icon, Not for Editing, indicates meeting points in the matrix where two identical objects meet.

Display Types

Also to the right of the matrix area, under Display Types, are various combinations of icons for the relation types. These are next to radio buttons for choosing the relation types to be displayed in the matrix. After selecting the desired relation type, or types, choose Display.

The options are:

Manual	View only relations which have been modified.
Manual and Foreign Key	View manual and foreign key (direct) relations. Displaying foreign key (direct) relations only is not a useful option. Existing manual relations would appear to be empty in the matrix and an existing manual relation may have overwritten a direct relation.
Manual, Foreign Key, and Automatic	View all relations.

Viewing Autocomplete Relations

If you select to view all relation types, including automatic relations, you must choose the Autocomplete button under the relation matrix area to activate the computation of automatic relations.

If you performed autocomplete, and then added or deleted business objects, you may need to refresh the matrix by performing autocomplete again.

From and To Object Selection Fields

In an organization where the productive system could contain a very large number of business objects and relations, the From and To Object fields can help avoid tiresome scrolling in order to find these relations for editing.

The drop-down selection fields contain lists of all the business objects added to the respective parts of the relationship matrix area. After selecting the desired From and To objects, choose Apply and the relevant relation is highlighted in the matrix.

Commands Affecting the Relationship Matrix

The five buttons below the relationship matrix area activate the following commands:

Edit	Opens the Single Relation Editor for the selected relation in a separate tab. Double-clicking the selection also opens the editor.
Autocomplete	Activates the computation of automatic relations for all the objects in the matrix. For more information on automatic relations, see Autocompleting Relations.
Delete	Deletes the selected relations from the relations matrix area.
Remove Object	Removes selected business objects from the Relationship Editor.
Clear	Removes all objects from the Relationship Editor.