Chapter 4 Building an Information Liquidity Model

Defining Generation Links

A generation link is a relationship that documents generation dependencies between at least two of the following data stores:

Databases (container for PDMs)
XML documents (container for XSMs)
Data access applications (container for OOMs)

From a generation link, you can access the Generation Links Viewer (GLV), which provides a detailed view of the generation dependencies.

Model generation

Model generation is used to link models together using generation links.

You can generate a model from another model of the same type or from another type.

The generation link graphically materializes a generation dependency between two data stores:

From the contextual menu of the generation link, you can access the Generation Links Viewer, in order to visualize the generation links between the origin and derived models associated with each one of the data stores. When several models are associated with a given data store, a dialog box is displayed that allows you to select a model from the list. The corresponding model is automatically displayed in the Target pane of the Generation Links Viewer—Origin model.

You can also access the Generation Links Viewer from the contextual menu of the source or target data store of a generation link. You can select the Show Origin Generation Links command or the Show Derived Generation Links command and open the corresponding viewer.

Complete (All) Generation Links

In addition, you can recover the ILM diagram corresponding to the intermodel generation using the Complete Generation Link command or the Complete All Generation Links command (for recursive completeness) in the contextual menu of a data store (database, XML document or data access application). The data store must have an associated model, and generation dependencies.

For more information about the Generation Links Viewer, see the "The Generation Links Viewer" chapter in the General Features Guide .

Dragging a generation link to a different object
You change the objects at either end of a generation link by clicking the generation link to select it, and dragging one of the attach points to a different object.