TM1 Forum

Hi

I'm curious, is anyone actually using PAW as their main TI editor?

I like some of the colour coding, shortcut keys and validation in the main Script section but generally I find it frustrating to work with, switching between processes is annoying and inevitably I end up reverting to Architect for source/params and a trusty third party editor for script.

Interested to hear others opinions!

I had in fact been thinking of proposing a similar question on here myself, due to the fact I have seen a lot of negative comments in other threads regarding both the TI Editor and Rules Editors available in workspace.

My view of it with regards to your actual question is that even though workspace is available as a dev tool, I am still using architect - however this is not due to me disliking workspace's TI and/or rule editor but simply down to the fact that I have worked with architect for so long that doing everything in it is muscle memory and that means I can produce something incredibly quickly in architect whereas any other tool (regardless of how good that tool is) will take me longer currently due to the fact that I have to actually use my brain to do it.

But when it comes to a blank slate, a developer who is coming fresh to TM1/PA - I feel pretty happy telling them to work with the editors available in workspace. Simply put, every single thing that I wished was in the old editors when I started out - is now available in workspace's editors. Be that colour coding, intellisense, indenting code with a tab instead of CTRL + I and so on and so forth.
The only thing I don't like about the editors in workspace is that you add them to sheets, so you can't easily go full screen without dragging the window about.
It feels like the development aspect of workspace was an afterthought, in the sense that workspace is clearly designed as an end user tool from the way you interact with it through books etc. Perhaps it would be nicer if developers had a slightly modified version of workspace. But that being said, one of my complaints with TM1/PA historically is that there are too many interfaces - so all in all you can't achieve everything perfectly, it would be impossible - or at least - it would be impossible to have it work in every way I would want it to, because I personally have contradicting views of how it would work in an ideal world and I'm just 1 person!

I am trying to push myself to use the editors in workspace more and more because I do honestly believe its a good interface and when I use it for long enough, tasks in it will become instinctive in the way they are for me now in architect.

For me its a big thumbs up. It feels like IBM have learnt from the mistakes that were made with performance modeller and delivered an interface that does everything it should do, they stepped back and instead of trying to make it a wizard first interface, simply decided that the method in which developers have modelled historically was working and all they needed to do was make that interface less grey and drab.

I am currently on a project that involves showing some users that are new to TM1/PA how to do development, when we first started working together they didn't have workspace in their environment. The second that workspace became available it was clear that it would be their preferred interface.

I am genuinely interested to hear from people with differing viewpoints as to what it is specifically they don't like about it, maybe there are things I haven't noticed yet and should be wary of. I do expect that some people are maybe being negative about workspace as a whole because the installation is now more cumbersome than just click next a few times and wait for it to finish. But most developers don't have to worry about the installation side of things so I am interested in people's view points with the assumption that it is installed and working correctly as a starting point.

Thanks Declan great response

I also have seen users come to TM1 cold and go straight to the PAW editor, interestingly one comment I heard from someone who'd used Architect a bit before was they wished it had the DB function builder to default the !dims. I'd agree with this but it's not a massive issue.

The scripting page is better than architect by far but I guess you get used to what you are used to as you say. Generally my gripes are about the tabs and dropdowns, eg I find the Data Source section really clunky having to scroll left and right to set variables for a file with more than about 5 columns, and the dropdown list to switch processes is pretty much useless as it's too short to be able to fully read process names. I also agree with your full screen point this is very annoying!

Like you I am also trying to use it more often as "it's the future"....

Agree the PAW editors are a tremendous improvement, although I, like Declan, use Architect for pretty much the same reason. I do use Notepad++ for TIs and Rules, then paste the code into the Architect editors.

It may be "muscle memory," but Notepad++ seems to be much faster and offers some features I like over the PAW editors.

It may be "muscle memory," but Notepad++ seems to be much faster and offers some features I like over the PAW editors.

If you take the time to say what these features are you never know who might be watching and find that these features make it into the product (eventually). I have found the product development team can be quite receptive to feedback, especially when it comes to small features that make a big difference to usability.

Steve Rowe wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 5:16 pm

It may be "muscle memory," but Notepad++ seems to be much faster and offers some features I like over the PAW editors.

If you take the time to say what these features are you never know who might be watching and find that these features make it into the product (eventually). I have found the product development team can be quite receptive to feedback, especially when it comes to small features that make a big difference to usability.

Point taken.

One is it just faster, especially when one has to scroll and/or use of keyboard shortcuts.
A biggie for me is the book marking capability.
The find/replace is far more powerful.
Rare, but can do column selection when I need it.

I'm sure there are more features I prefer, but as I used the new editors only until I decided I'd rather stay on Notepad++, I can not describe them.

I have an issue in the PAW TI editor. Maybe others have had this too.

In an IBM model for TM1, there are TI processes with a Text file as the Data source.
If I drag and drop the process name on the canvas, an error message comes up that the source file cannot be found:
When the data source (text file) is set AGAIN, it seems to work and PAW remembers the locations of the most recent files.
However, I am not interested in recreating the data sources again for existing TI processes.

This being said, once the data source is fine, where in the TI process in the editor can I see the full path ?
I mean, opening up a process later on and wanting to check the full file path, where can I have that information ? I can only find the filename without the path.
I know that this is work in progress probably but not being able to do these basic things is disappointing.