Category: Hints & Tips

Creating Link Rules in Cradle

Creating link rules in Cradle is performed in the Link Rules section of Project Setup. If you require more information on how to find this please see the previous post Getting Started with Link Rules in Cradle.

New link rules are added by selecting the Add… button to the right of the Project Setup window.

Selecting Add… opens the Link Rule Setup dialog. The purpose of this window is to select the attributes for our new link rule.

Specifying Options and Attributes in Link Rule Setup

When creating link rules, you need to decide their purpose and to what items/aspects you want them to apply.

Rule Control

• Firstly decide whether the rule is enabled (this allows rules to be written but whether they are applied or not may depend on the stage the current project is at)
• Next decide whether this rule is an ALLOW (Permit the operation) or PREVENT (Prevent operation) action.
• Choose whether this is a blanket rule, or whether it only applies to certain Users, or User Teams.

Cross Reference Attributes

• Pick the item types that this refers to. (If these are model-based there are further options to fill)
• Optionally restrict this to items with a particular ID. (This might be useful if you have an over arching item e.g. “Reference Set External” to which all external references are linked with a special INCLUDES link type which can be made by anyone adding a reference)
• The link type can be specified as any of those defined for the project, or <any> which allows all link types to match, or a Link Group which is a set of link types.
• Choose the cardinality allowed.
• Optionally mark this as the default link type between two specific item types. This will then be the link type chosen when creating cross references between items of the specified type, either to set the UI as default or when no UI option is available for the action.

Matched Rule Controls

This defines what the rule will allow in terms of Creation, Deletion or Modification.

Ordering Rules

When creating link rules, remember they are applied in a top down fashion, the first match wins. If there is a narrow case you don’t want to allow, you may choose to PREVENT this first and then add an ALLOW below it. If there is a narrow case you want to ALLOW you would order this first and then PREVENT everything else.

Example:

To allow Requirements to be linked to any Equipment Design item, with any link except CHILD you would define two rules.

1. PREVENT Requirement ⎯ CHILD → EQUIPMENT DESIGN
2. ALLOW   Requirement ⎯ <any> → EQUIPMENT DESIGN

To allow the Requirements to be linked to other Requirements using the CHILD link, and nothing else a further two rules would be added.

3. ALLOW   Requirement ⎯ CHILD → Requirement
4. PREVENT Requirement ⎯ <any>→ Requirement

Keeping Cradle in Tip Top Condition

This article will highlight a set of housekeeping tips to keep Cradle running smoothly and provide a good user environment.

Alerts

Whilst alerts are a very useful feature telling users  that an aspect or item of their project has changed, users sometimes forget to clear their alerts from their accounts. You could ask each user to select old read/unread alerts and delete them. However, an administrative user with both PROJECT and ACCESS_BYPASS privileges can tidy alerts for ALL users

Selecting the Project tab, then Delete Alerts will show a dialog that lets the administrator choose a range of ALL users’ alerts to delete. This will remove read and unread alerts from the database.

Additionally Alerts can be tidied up by each user automatically each time they log out. This setting can be found in the Project Setup under Alerts.

Definitions

These can include Queries, Views, Forms, Matrices, Metrics, Reports, Graphs, Dashboards, Navigations, Start Pages, Graphics Print Settings, Hierarchy Diagram Properties, Capture Setups, Report Styles, Graph Styles, Export / Import Formats.

They are stored in different groupings, Personal, Project, User, Team, User Type, System and Automatic. These groups allow the definitions to be shared according to their intended use. Project for example is available to everyone working on that project, whereas User Type definitions match someone’s role on that project and are available to users holding that role. Personal definitions however, will be available to that person, across projects.

Sometimes duplicates or old definitions can accumulate and need tidying up. The definitions manager allows users to manipulate.

From the Project toolbar selecting the Definitions Manager will show the following dialog.

Using the side buttons, definitions can be moved, copied and deleted. This would allow, say a team leader with creation privileges, to develop a number of queries or views and then move them into User Types for use by users who are not allowed to modify or create the definitions, themselves.

Depending on the location of the definition users may need one or more privileges from CREATE_DEFS, PROJECT, TEAM_LEADER or indeed ACCESS_BYPASS.

DPack

The DISAM database file system used by Cradle consists of file pairs of data and index files. After time, it is possible, that a number of blank areas will appear in the data file, as a result of large numbers of records having been deleted. Whilst this is perfectly normal operation, it can mean the data file is larger than it needs to be.

The DPack utility can be used to re-write these files more compactly and rebuild the indexes. This is not considered an everyday operation and would normally only be performed by and IT administrator. This should only be performed when the CDS (Cradle Database Sever) is not running.

1. Make sure you have a backup of the entire project directory – incase a power-cut or machine failure occurs during crucial operations
2. Move to the directory to be compacted
3. Run the following command (c_dpack on Linux, dpack.exe on Windows®)
   "%CRADLEHOME%\bin\exe\windows\dpack.exe" tlb1alrt Where tlb1 is the project code and alrt is the particular database file to re-pack.
4. To complete this for all files in the directory running a batch-file or script
   e.g. on Windows®
   @echo OFF
for /F %%f in ('dir /B "C:\Data\cradle_projects\TLB1\*.dat"') do (
   echo Processing file %%~nf
   "%CRADLEHOME%\bin\exe\windows\dpack.exe" %%~nf
)
   Where C:\Data\cradle_projects\TLB1\TLB1 is the directory for the project.

Cradle History

Keeping track of what you’ve been doing is really useful, the history sidebar shows the queries you have run and the items you have opened.

However, sometimes you may have a long list of entries from a particular day, you may then want to work on a different part of the project. In this instance it is sometimes useful to clear your history and start afresh. In the History Sidebar you can choose what to clear by selecting and right clicking items in the menu.

Larger amounts can be cleared through the Clear Browsing History option on the Project tab.