Hidding fields and printer margins

First of all, to congratulate you on your espectacular tool.

I want to ask some questions:

It’s possible to hide some fields that are no needed to understand some model?

It’s possible to show the printer margins?

Hi Pablo,

It’s possible to hide some fields that are no needed to understand some model?

Sorry, but we do not quite understand this one. Could you provide more information and examples about the fields that you are referring to?

It’s possible to show the printer margins?

Where do you want to show the print margin? We can show the print margin in the print preview page.

Best regards,
Jick

I’ll answer you:

First question: Imagine that you have an entity (table) that have 30 fields and five of them are relevant for many of the models you are showing this entity (in the other models, only show the name or show all of the fields). Well I want to know if DBVA have any way to hide the fields that are no important to understand a model.

Last question: The print margin are really useful to show in the working area, because is really “unproductive” to use all the time the print preview page to know if your objects will be showed in a page or many.

Somebody can respond to the question. I imagine that it will not be necessary to belong to the equipment (although it is for saying to me that not it can)

Hi Pablo,

Sorry but we are still unable to understand your first suggestion. Would you mind presenting your idea with images? Sorry for any inconveniences it may cause you.

For the second issue, I have already forwarded your message to our development team as a feature suggestion. Will let you know once there is a reply from them.

Best regards,
Jick

I Attach you a image that show what I want to do about the first question.


Two Related Entities One Of Them With Many Many Many Fields.png

Hi Pablo,

Thanks for your reply. Sorry, I should say clearer. We can understand the functionality you expected. But we do not know the reason and intention for having such feature. Why do you want to hide some of the columns? Just because the entity is too long? If yes, why not hide the whole compartment? What is the criteria for hiding/showing columns?

You said: “Imagine that you have an entity (table) that have 30 fields and five of them are relevant for many of the models you are showing this entity”. This is probably what we want to know, yet not quite understand yet. (Sorry for my poor English knowledge…)

Best regards,
Jick

The main reason by that desire to hide those fields is because in this concrete diagram in the only thing that do it is to bother to me.

It imagines that the same entity are showed in many ER diagrams and only in one of them you show with all of her fields, but in the rest of the cases only it interests to show to you the fields that are important (for example, xPK’sx, xFPK’sx or xFK’sx) and the single rest occupies space to you and they prevent think you in the important information.

This it is the reason by which those fields exceed to me in those models.

I hope that you understood.

P.D. These two characteristics you are present in other CASE tools and for my they are fundamental.
P.D.2. Sorry for my really poor English knowledge (I translate from spanish)

you continue thinking that it does not serve for anything?

It is a utility to avoid that the analysts we must fix to us to too much irrelevant information… and above avoids to have to destroy so many trees: -) (Think that may have to print several diagrams that has this table, and that above counts with a great amount of fields that you do not want to see)… and worse, when you change some of this irrelevant fields, you must change all of this printed diagrams.

Hi Pablo,

Not really. We are still trying to understand your reply. How about you write in Spanish and we try to translate it at our side?

Best regards,
Jick

Bueno pues ahí voy:

Hola de nuevo Jick.

Mira, los motivos principales por los que quiero ocultar campos son:

a) Por que si la tabla la utilizo en distintos escenarios (es una tabla que tiene relación con diversas partes del sistema), pero en cada escenario solo quiero mostrar solo las Primary Key y algunos campos mas (quizás que justifiquen la relación entre esa tabla tan grande con otras de esa parte del sistema), el resto de campos me sobra.
b) Hay un principio en la creación de diagramas que debería tenerse en cuenta siempre (esto también es aplicable a los diagramas de clases): El número de veces que se repita la información tiene que ser mínimo para poder entender el sistema y para que una refactorización no te tenga buscando en miles de diagramas varias horas, para después imprimir dichos diagramas con la nueva versión.
c) Porque, al ser irrelevantes, obstruyen la comprensión del sistema, intentaré poner un ejemplo real, imagina que tienes un escritorio lleno de papeles, con los que trabajas normalmente, pero lo que es cierto es que un día usas unos papeles, y otro día usas otros, por lo tanto, lo mejor que puedes hacer es clasificarlos en carpetas, y cada día usas una o dos eso lo entiendes ¿verdad?, bueno pues volviendo al terreno del modelado, una tabla con una cantidad tan grande de campos es como todos los papeles juntos, que realmente, es muy difícil centrarte en los campos que para ese diagrama en concreto (que por ejemplo, muestra la relación de la tabla A del módulo X con las tablas C,D,E, del módulo Y) no te sirven para nada, excepto para “desconcentrarte”.

Bueno… imagino que hasta mañana ya no tendré respuesta… osea que: See you tomorrow :-).

Hi Pablo,

We are very close to a decision. Please comment on my points below

  1. For point 1, you mean that you may want to show only the columns that are relevant to the relationships between the entities, like Primary Key and Foreign Key

  2. For point 2, you mean that you may want to hide away the columns that give no additional meaning to the entity. For example, you may have Description1 and Description2 columns, while showing Description1 is enough to represent the need of entering description.

  3. I still need some time to analyze this one. Will come back to you with more detail.

Best regards,
Jick

We are really really really close to understand us… but with some points in disapointment.

The first point: In SOME cases I want to show no only PK’s, FK’s or FPK’s FIELDS (sorry but I don’t understand if you use “Columns” to make use the same concept), but could be a good aprox. (something like “show only Key Fields”, instead of “show only current fields”)

You sencond point… it’s like I’d said, I don’t know if you use the term “colum” like “fields”

Hello Pablo,

Having considering your reasons, we decided to support hiding user-selected entity columns (fields). This is still early to say when this will be available. But I will keep you informed. Let’s keep in touch.

Finally, thank you for your suggestion!

Best regards,
Jick

REALLY REALLY THANKS to consider that my idea is good (I hope that the one of the impression margins also it seems to you good idea; -)). 

As for me, to comment that I take showing your tool diverse controls of the company in which work (40 workers approximately) to begin to use your wonderful tool in diverse projects (… really for my this it was good part of the decision making), but we are even using the evaluations as better we can:-(. 

As soon as you have assumed the new ideas I can contribute manY, but I will leave it for but ahead, not to generate as much overload; -).