Data Flow Diagram

[JamiseBondi]

Hi all,

I have a requirement to create some data flow diagrams for a few models and have used Performance Modeler to do a reasonable job. I am able to get the cubes into the layout and track feeders and cube rules without a problem. I cannot however get the TI processes into the layout so I can't track the process links at all. I see the Model and application views and I can see all the TM1 objects in a tree view on the left hand margin.... but I can only drag cubes into the diagram layout, I can't drag TI's into this layout, without which the "Process Links" won't work as there are no objects to link to. I'm running PM from IE11. The server is 2008 R2 Enterprise. The TM1 version is 10.2 with fixpack 3.
Any feedback would be great.
In the meantime I'm looking at graphviz as an alternative.

[jim wood]

After a pointer form a colleague I've started using http://www.draw.io

[JamiseBondi]

After a pointer form a colleague I've started using http://www.draw.io

thanks Jim. I see it's like an online version of Visio (from what I can see) which is great - except I was actually after the linking logic that is provided by virtue of PM knowing which cubes are linked to other cubes via feeders, rules and TI's etc. This would need to be manually done which would consume a lot of my time. I was hoping for something that would interrogate the model and do the linking without me having to put in the time to read rules and TI's to make the same 'mind map'.
Appreciate the info though.
I'll post back here to see how much effort is involved in feeding the .rux and .pro files into the perl parser which then feeds into graphviz. The advantage being that the linking of all objects would be automatic and I can choose what objects to include in the final diagram.

Thanks again.

[BariAbdul]

Hi JamiseBondi,I am not sure much it is useful to you,It is not a graphing tool per se ,But actually a Perl script. Please have a look at it,Graphing TM1 data flow:
http://www.bihints.com/graphing_tm1_data_flow Thanks.

[JamiseBondi]

Hi JamiseBondi,I am not sure much it is useful to you,It is not a graphing tool per se ,But actually a Perl script. Please have a look at it,Graphing TM1 data flow:
http://www.bihints.com/graphing_tm1_data_flow Thanks.

I BariAbdul,

I understand the 'solution' to be as follows:
Install perl and graphviz. Then you would open the perl script and point it to the data folder of the TM1 instance that you wanted to create a diagram for.... the perl script would then (using the .rux and .pro files contained in the location you pointed the perl script to) create the necessary files that graphviz uses to generate two files: flow.dot and flow.gif
The gif file can then be opened in any picture editor and is similar to the image shown in the URL you posted above.
Is this not correct? what am I missing?
Many thanks.

[Edward Stuart]

That is correct, get's a bit unwieldy when you have a lot of objects I find though.

Keep meaning to have another look and get it to parse out details for a particular data source/ cube/ process but I've not used it for years

Find it quicker to search for "DB(" in Agent Ransack/ FileLocator Lite/Pro and manually draw/ input into Visio/ drawing tool of choice

[blackhawk]

That is correct, get's a bit unwieldy when you have a lot of objects I find though.

Totally agree. The problem with automated documentation, while it may look great on the surface, all it does really is present to you what is already there, and quite often, easier to read by just looking at the scripts/rules. Having lines drawn from every cube to every cube doesn't provide much value.

What I would surmise most people are after is more about how things logically flow with respect to a particular segment of data/business process. For example, show how actuals flow into the system, which is rarely the same as forecast. Or show how headcount changes flow through the cubes and then impact the financial P&L reports.

If anyone can figure out how to generate that kind of documentation automagically, sign me up!

Ah well...back to Visio.

[st2000]

The topic is a little older, but just to share another possible solution to this: I solved it for my own purposes using yED: https://www.yworks.com/products/yed
You can prepare a adjacence matrix in Excel, open this Excel file with the yED editor and point it to the matrix. It will build a .graphml-file from that. You have now inside the editor a feature called neighborhood, looks like this: yED neighborhood example. If you click on an item, the neighborhood vie shows the precessors and the successors.

Just make a matrix:

Example Matrix

yED1.png (3.91 KiB) Viewed 6656 times

then open it with the yED editor and import it as a adjacence matrix

import it as a adjacence matrix

yED2.png (30.65 KiB) Viewed 6656 times

and determine the rough style of the graph

style

yED3.png (29.23 KiB) Viewed 6656 times

Result? Watch the next post, as I could only pots max. 3 images per post, as it seems...

[st2000]

Here it comes:

Graph below neighbourhood above

yED4.png (11.24 KiB) Viewed 6656 times

(graph below neighbourhood above: In the graph "proc2" was clicked, which leads to the extracted view above)

Obviously it's not a kind of automatic analysis of metadata, but as I document my own framework continously, it helps tremendous to indicate, which Processes are dependent from whose others. Before I change them and create side effects for later...