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January 29, 2010
insight series: creating drawings with expressor illustrator
expressor illustrator is a graphical interface based on Microsoft Visio that application developers use to creating data-flow diagrams, called "drawings" in expressor. expressor illustrator drawings are comprised of expressor processor image, network and channel descriptions, and connectors (called "motors" in expressor) and operators.
expressor illustrator -- Microsoft Visio based application used by ETL developers to build expressor drawings
Only individuals assigned to an ETL developer role can open an illustrator project. Developers use illustrator to design a data integration application as one or more drawings. expressor illustrator stores its artifacts in the expressor repositor version control system so individual developers have access to all the illustrator drawings and other artifacts comprising the project.
To create a drawing in illustrator, you highlight the project in which to include the drawing and, if necessary, check the project out of the repositor version control system. When you bring up a blank drawing, you will see a number of shapes representing the processor motors and operators.
expressor shapes are classified in functional groups.
- collate: operators for collating, grouping and identifying a specific record in a collection of records
- data-in: motors that retrieve data records from external sources and submits these records to the application
- data-out: motors that send records from the application to external sources
- database: motors that retrieve and submit data records to external relational database management systems
- partition: operators that merge, replicate or partition data records
- sort: operators that sort and merge data records
- transform: operators that manipulate (modify, delete, extend) the content of data records
- utility: operators that provide various support functions, such as generating test data
You create a drawing by simply dragging and dropping shapes onto the Visio drawing, then using the Connector Tool to establish the data flow in the drawing. For each shape, the expressor message panel at the bottom of drawing panel lists warnings, errors and tasks that must be addressed before the drawing is valid.
Shape color is a visual clue to the correctness of its configuration. When it is first added to a drawing, a shape is yellow, indicating that its configuration options have not been set. White indicates that a shape has been properly configured.
Colors other than white can indicate a correctly configured shape and provide additional information about how the shape's processing will be performed. For example, turquoise indicates that the processing will use memory to store processing intermediates, red indicates that the processing will discard data, and orange indicates that data is being filtered.
To save a drawing, select File > Save. The drawing is saved into the project as a Microsoft Visio XML Drawing (.vdx extension). You do not need to supply the extension when you name the file.
John Lifter, expressor training and documentation
Posted by expressor software at January 29, 2010 11:45 AM
Comments
Great article. I could use this for creating flowcharts for patents.
Posted by: Patent Drawings at February 15, 2010 10:32 PM
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