Relationship Matrix - Basic Issues

[Graham_Moir]

Hello cty,  your english is very good and "sellable" is definitely a word I would use, although "sellable to" rather than "sellable beside".  

Also probably worth pointing out that the reason you have a different delimiter for csv files in France is because of the special meaning given to the comma,  for example you use it where the English/American would use a decimal point.    

Of course as "csv" is short for "comma separated values",  you'll have to change the name of these files in France to ssv  (semi-colon separated values - or the french equivalent !).    

[fwoolz]

Paolo,

Hear, hear! Perhaps the relationship matrix should be recast as a "Relationship Manager," incorporating (an improved version of) the still very useful matrix along with other features related to exploring, creating, and modifying relationships.

Cheers,
Fred W

[Paolo F Cantoni]

Paolo,

Hear, hear! Perhaps the relationship matrix should be recast as a "Relationship Manager," incorporating (an improved version of) the still very useful matrix along with other features related to exploring, creating, and modifying relationships.

Cheers,
Fred W

Indeed Fred!

I was hoping someone would pick up on this view...  It's an example of what I often describe as "same semantics, different syntax".

When you combine the ability above to be able to resolve down to one of multiple relationships between any two elements with the compact form of the matrix you DO get a powerful relationship manager.

Perhaps you could expand on what you consider the UI might look like?

Paolo

[fwoolz]

Indeed Fred!

I was hoping someone would pick up on this view...  It's an example of what I often describe as "same semantics, different syntax".

When you combine the ability above to be able to resolve down to one of multiple relationships between any two elements with the compact form of the matrix you DO get a powerful relationship manager.

Perhaps you could expand on what you consider the UI might look like?

Paolo

Some random thoughts on the UI:

1. One approach might be to have two sets of trees (hierarchical or flattened, with elements shown in tree order), with links created by setting the link type and dragging from an element in one tree to one or more elements in the other tree (or by dragging and setting the link type after).
2. Another approach might be to have a window similar to that used in setting up database relationship diagrams, with the possibility to add packages and elements by drag and drop (as many as you like) from the project view. Element hierarchies could be "flattened" to simplify the UI, but this might require the use of fully qualified names to avoid confusion. Dragging from an element to another, or selecting "from" elements and "to" elements, then selecting the type and "arity" of the links to be created (e.g. Association, Source->Destination,Stereotype, One-To-Many...). Once created, the relationship diagram could be saved (the equivalent of saving a Matrix profile). Again, I'm thinking of something similar to creating joins in a database diagram.
3. A fully navigable relationship explorer would need to be included as well.
4. There should also be an option to select elements automatically for linking/exploring by means of filters and SQL queries (Model searches!).

Best Regards,
Fred W

[wikitect]

Agree absolutely. Many views - such as those in MODAF and DODAF and cousins of have matrices with rows i.e. more than one element type connected together whereas the current matrix view is simply an intersection between 2 types.

An example would be the Sv-6 Systems Data Exchange Matrix.

In any case it helps to add context.

... and whilst on a similar vein why not export search results as CSV?

[wikitect]

Sorry to be wicked, but in France the word order of acronyms seems to be reversed (witness OTAN and SIDA) so maybe the export might be .VSC? ;-)

Too much temptation. And, yes, I worked on a tri-national English/French/German project for 8 years and learnt a lot.

[SpoonsJTD]

I agree with all the requests and would like to add another that other threads have mentioned -- the ability to include the matrices in generated RTF or HTML. The matrix is a powerful visualization of the model and I'd really like to see it in my output documentation.

[fwoolz]

"Using mostly spoons..." - Mike Wazowski, "Monsters Inc."

Now that I got that out of my system:

Spoons,

Excellent idea!