How to identify unnamed connections

[Hieu Phan]

Hi dear,

I created a relationship report based on connector/relationship name, it works fine if we specified the name for a type of connector (e.g. Association). Then I want to check if there is any relationship/connector of that type left without being named. How can I produce the relationship report to see just unnamed connection? I tried to type NULL in the Relationship Name but it didn’t work.

Kind regards,
Hieu Phan.

[eadocX Support]

Sadly, not possible. If you specify the name, then only connectors of that name will be found. If no name, then eaDocX finds ALL connectors, with and without names.
One trick you might try is to create a report with the connector name as a column, then use Conditional Formatting to highlight where there are connectors with not name (use the IsEmpty operator).

[Hieu Phan]

If I have 3 columns in my Word document: Column A (source element name), column B (connector name), column C (target element name) and the source element links to mutiple target elements, how can I know which connector name is related to which target element name. I don’t see an option to print multiple attribute names in one column for table format (i.e. column B with both target name and relationship name). Is is possible to do that or I missed something.

Thanks!

[eadocX Support]

Ah – this is a tricky problem.
As you correctly observe, in your example, the results are ambiguous.
This is exactly why we developed the ‘Relationship Table’ idea.
In this case, you specify the relationships you want to navigate just once, then print attributes of the elements (& connector) which result. It’s not as neat as how you might create the table manually, but we had a really good attempt to produce the more complex table that would be the perfect solution, and it was really hard to understand – hard for us, problably very hard for most users. Above all, we want to keep eaDocX as simple as possible.
Rather than explain it again, have a look in the eaDocX help under Relationship table: it’s quite a full description of the problem & solution. If that doesn’t explain it, re-post, and I’ll think about adding more to the help.

[Hieu Phan]

I’ve read the Relationship table, it’s very useful if I have 2 element types of interest (and the relationships between them). Thanks so much!

My situation is I have 3 elements of interest. For example, my model has Actor <> Activity, and Activity <> ApplicationComponent. Is it possible to use the Relationship table to print out for each Actor, which Activity the Actor performs and in the next cell of that row (for each Activity), print out all ApplicationComponent used to process that Activity.

I tried to use multihop in the table format for Actor, and as you said above, the results are ambiguous. Really appreciate if you can suggest some solution for this.

[eadocX Support]

Short answer – no.
Long answer:
The way eaDocX works is that it creates tables by reference back to the original element – in your case the Actor.
Each column in the table is then created with reference to that Actor: either a single-hop relationship, or a multi-hop one, but it all starts with the ‘source’ element.
The problem you face is not unusual for a complex model. The simple solution, which I admit isn’t exactly what you want, is to have multiple tables, and use eaDocX hyperlinking to join them.
So, a table of Actors and their Activities, with each Activity being a hyperlink to…
then
…elsewhere in the document,
A table of Actvities, and the Application Components they are linked to. And even a link back to the actors.

Alternative is to use multi-hop, and show all the Application Components for the Actor.

The hybrid which you’re asking for, which would be a MUCH more complex table (rememeber it has to work for any possible model structure) , with some cells being split, has proved too complicated to implement.

[Hieu Phan]

Thanks for your clear answer!! It helps a lot.

Cheers,
Hieu Phan.

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