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Working with Perspectives in Model Designer

A perspective is a subset of a model. Model subsetting can be helpful when the size of your model is very large, or if you want to partition the model so that specific user groups can access only the data they need.

Perspectives exist within a model and can contain entities, folders, roles, source fields, and expressions. They are not generated by the Model Designer wizard. Instead, manually create them and then select the model items that you want to include in the perspective by using the Edit Perspective dialog box. The entities, folders, source fields, roles, and expressions you add to the perspective are still available to the rest of the model and they can be added to other model items, such as folders or other perspectives, as well.

In the New Perspective dialog box, clearing model item check boxes deletes them from the perspective. The following rules apply to items that are added or removed from the perspective.

Containment

  • When a parent item, such as an entity folder or attribute with variations, check box is selected, check boxes for all items contained within the parent item are selected as well. When a parent item check box is cleared, check boxes for all items contained within the parent item are cleared as well. Items contained within another item cannot be selected unless the parent item is selected.

  • When an entity check box is cleared, check boxes for all items contained within the entity are cleared as well. When an entity check box is selected, check boxes for all items contained within the entity are selected as well. Also, all check boxes are selected for all entities that roles in this entity lead to. But for roles that this entity leads to, only the check boxes for the entity are selected to indicate the identifying attributes of those entities are included, the check boxes for the other contents of the entity are not selected.

  • When an attribute check box is cleared, check boxes for any variations of that attribute are cleared as well.

  • When a folder check box is cleared, check boxes for all contents of the folder are cleared too. When a folder check box is selected, check boxes for all items within the folder are selected as well.

Roles

  • When a role check box is cleared, the corresponding role's check box is cleared also. When a role check box is selected, the corresponding role's check box is also selected. If the corresponding role leads to an entity that is not selected, the check box for that entity is selected.

Identifying Attributes

  • When an attribute check box is cleared, Model Designer determines if the attribute is used as an identifying attribute of another entity. If the attribute is used as an identifying attribute elsewhere, the check boxes are cleared for the entity or entities that use this attribute as an identifying attribute. To select the entity again, you need to select the check boxes for the identifying attributes of the entity.

In Report Builder, perspectives appear like any other model in the Getting Started pane.