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Please note : This help page is not for the latest version of Enterprise Architect. The latest help can be found here.

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The Glossary Dialog

Using the 'Glossary' dialog, you can create, maintain and delete definitions of terms used in your project, as a Glossary. When reviewing the Glossary terms, you can filter the list to display terms of a specific Type.

The term Type also acts as a key for substituting the description of any term of that Type for the term itself, so that in a report the terms 'Corp', 'Uni' and 'Ult' would be replaced by the descriptions 'Corporate', 'Unified' and 'Ultimate', respectively.

Access

Ribbon

Publish > Dictionary > Glossary > Edit

Maintain Glossary Terms

Field

Action

See also

Glossary Term

Type the term to include in the glossary.

Glossary Type

(Mandatory) Every Glossary term must be assigned to a Type, so that you can:

  • Filter terms by Type
  • Search for terms of specific Type
  • Assign a format and style to terms of a Type to indicate that a glossary definition has been attached to a word in the text; terms of different Types would be distinguished by their respective styles
  • Replace all terms of a specific Type with the text string in their 'Description' field (see the Substituting Descriptions for Terms section later in this topic)

When you first start to create a Glossary, there are no Types defined in your model. You create the Types that are most appropriate to your work environment, by clicking on the Browse. button and, on the 'New Glossary Type' prompt, entering the name of the new Type. The names that you invent for the Types would be whatever is meaningful to the people compiling and using the Glossary.

In the simplest of Glossaries you might have just one Type, simply to assign a style to it so that terms are identified as being defined in the Glossary. In larger, more complex Glossaries you might have different Types to group - for example - Business terms, System terms and Project-Specific terms.

When the Types you require have been created, and you are defining a term, click on the drop-down arrow and select the appropriate Type.

This field applies the Type only to the selected term; you can rename a Type for all terms of that Type using the Glossary view.

Glossary Styles Project Glossary View

Description

(Mandatory) Type the definition or description of the term.

If necessary, format the text of this description using the Notes toolbar at the top of the field.

Notes Toolbar

Limit Display To

Click on the drop-down arrow and select the appropriate glossary type to filter the 'Type | Term' list and show entries of that type only.

Select the '<All>' option to display all glossary entries.

New

Click on this button to clear the dialog fields so that you can define a new Glossary term.

Type | Term

Review the list of defined glossary terms; click on an entry to edit it in the dialog fields.

Save

Click on this button to save the new or updated glossary entry.

Delete

Click on this button to delete the entry selected from the 'Type | Term' list.

Report

Click on this button to generate and print a glossary report.

Generate a Report Glossary Report Output Sample

Substituting Descriptions for Terms

You can use the Type of Glossary entries to replace all terms of that Type in a report with the text string in the 'Description' field for each term.  For example, you might define a Type of 'Abbreviation' and use that Type for a number of terms such as Co, Bus and Corp, with the respective descriptions of Company, Business and Corporation; when you generate a report, the text Co, Bus and Corp will be replaced with the corresponding description.

You apply the glossary term substitution through the 'Generate Documentation' dialog - select the 'Publish > Model Reports > Report Builder > Generate Documentation' ribbon option - as described in the Generate Documentation Help topic. (This is separate from generating a report on the Glossary itself.)

  1. On the 'Generate' page, select the 'Markup Glossary Terms' checkbox
  2. In the 'Use Glossary Substitution' field, click on the drop-down arrow and select the term Type. (You can only substitute for terms of one Type at a time.)

When you generate the report, for all glossary terms of the specified Type, wherever a term occurs in the report it will be replaced by its description.

You should not set up term substitution in a model from which you generate only HTML reports; the HTML report generator does not substitute descriptions.

Notes

  • In the Corporate, Unified and Ultimate editions of Enterprise Architect, if security is enabled you must have 'Manage Glossary' permission in order to create, update or delete Glossary items; if security is not enabled, you can manage Glossary items without any permissions

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