Model Manager Guru - Tips and Tricks

Anyone who has used the ERwin Model Manager in the past decade has probably spoken to Matt over in the support team. I know that he has saved my bacon on quite a few occasions and is probably the number one resource for all things "Mart-related". Well, it turns out that he has been blogging on the CA Community pages and I wanted to promote some of his tips to all of you following this blog.

Matt's most recent post deals with a performance enhancement to the Model Manager in ERwin 8.1 and the recent ERwin 7.3.11 release. Basically, by enabling...

ERWIN_INC_ORACLE_FETCH_BUFFER = true

...there is a significant improvement of performance on the Model Manager data retrieval (about 1.5 times) when using Oracle or Sybase as the repository server. This is yet another reason to upgrade to 8.1. Be sure to read my previous post for more 8.1 features.

In this useful post Matt outlines a query that can be run against the Model Manager that will return all the model names as well as their target servers. For anyone that ever wanting a full report of the models and target servers without having to run individual reports, this is going to be a real time saver. The query is for SQL Server but can easily be modified for Oracle, as well.

This technical document is a great resource for specific techniques that will greatly improve your Model Manager workflow. Nearly all the techniques outlined are at the user (ERwin client) level. So if you are not making any headway with tweaking your server settings (or getting your team to roll out an upgrade) you can probably achieve huge performance improvements simply by implementing a few best practices and process changes.

The techniques described, include auto filtering all object types (like all graphics) with a single option change, within the action log, itself. This is a pain point that users are often unaware has such a simple solution.

Also, the technique of saving files offline if there are extensive changes to be made is my personal process and a suggestion I make to anyone who asks for my performance enhancement suggestions. By saving files offline, you bypass such issues of:

- Losing changes due to network failure.
- Performance bottlenecks when everyone attempts to save their files simultaneously (lunch, end of day).
- Prevents the creation of many unwanted version due to repeated incremental saves.

Little process changes can have big impact on your time to project's bottom line.

A few years back, Matt also published this article which outlines Model Manager tuning suggestions. This article is also part of the Bookshelf that is included as part of your ERwin installation.

Lastly, since we are on the topic of improving the model manager performance, I'd like to suggest an index of my own. This one has been floating around for some time (I worked on it back when I was in CA Support). It is very simple and in my experience it has improved my Model Manager performance 20 fold. I recently worked with a client that had an identical performance boost so I think I will post it, again. Worst case scenario, you will have 0% improvement in performance enhancement and you can simply drop the index, if that is the case. The index is as follows:

-----Oracle Script---------

CREATE INDEX XAK3_MASTVERS ON m7object

 (

   MASTERID ASC,

   STARTVERSION ASC

 )

 LOGGING

 TABLESPACE ; -- Replace with the name of your Data Tablespace (e.g. MMADMIN).

---------End Oracle Script 

------Sql Server Script------

 CREATE INDEX XAK3_MASTVERS ON m7object

 (

        MASTERID              ASC,

        STARTVERSION          ASC

 )

 Go

 ----End Sql Server Script---------

Make sure to subscribe to Matt's blog and to check out CA's weekly Tuesday Tips for more insight from the CA technical community. 

What's New In ERwin R8.1

So ERwin 8.1 is now available for download. What are the new features and what considerations are their with the upgrade.

Firstly, the above linked download 8.1 release does not include a Crystal Reports installation component. So if this is your initial install, be sure to install the 8.0 release with Crystal reports and then run the upgrade using the 8.1 install (it will automatically run as an upgrade). Of course, if you already have any ERwin 8.0 version installed, you simply execute the latest install package (either from a CD or the downloaded exe).

After your ERwin upgrade you will need to connect to your Model Mart to upgrade that to the latest version, as well. This takes only a few moments as the upgrade to the Mart is minimal. Have your Mart administrator upgrade their ERwin version to 8.1. Then have them navigate to the File | Mart | Initialize Mart... (don't worry, you will only be upgrading).

The admin will be prompted to connect as the same user that created the mart. After connecting, the initialization screen will only have an option for UPGRADE. Select Upgrade to complete the process.

Now, let's move on to the new features:

Fit to page printing

This may be the most demanded fix in the release. It simply allows the user to automatically fit the design into a single page, no matter the paper size. This feature is invoked through the actual Print editor.

Multiple diagram pictures

Personally, perhaps my most desired feature is the ability of generating multiple diagram picture reports at once. This was limited in the R8 release. This is most readily noticeable from the Tools | Diagram Picture | Generate Diagram Pictures menu item. Once the editor is invoked, you can easily select which diagrams in the current model you would like to generate images for and to which folder to publish them.

Lasso selection tool

The lasso selection tool works differently now, in that you will first lasso the objects that you would like to zoom in to (regardless of current magnification) and then click the Zoom to Fit Selection button in the Zoom Toolbar.

This is also available as an option from the View | Zoom menu items.

Preserve diagram layout enhancements

This is another nice fix. If you ever tried to copy and paste your design from one diagram to another (or between models) you noticed that the coordinates of the objects were lost. Now, they are preserved by default. This is going to save you a lot of time, laying out your design.

Similarly, when you derive a diagram based on an existing diagram, your layout will also be preserved.

Layout in Place

One of the great features of the ERwin r8 release is the ability to select only a subset of all the diagram objects and lay them out to one of the default layouts. This selective layout is a great time saver but in the 8.0 release the selected objects would move to a default location on the screen and would need to be moved again. This required extra work to achieve the desired result.

With r8.1 the layout now occurs within the context of the selected area so there is no need to move the objects again. This feature is the default and is automatically enabled. But it can be disabled from the Diagram | Layout menu items.

Copy objects enhancements


Another copy enhancement is that objects copied between from one diagram to another (in the same model) will simply create the drawing object with the preserved coordinates. You will no longer get duplicate tables, for example, if the tables already exist in the model.

ODBC Table Changes


The last topic I'll cover in this post is the addition of a new table to the ERwin ODBC client, DIAGRAM. If you have played with the ODBC reporting, previously, you may have noted the CURRENT_DIAGRAM table. Querying this table allowed the creation of a graphical report of the current diagram. With the additional support for multiple diagrams the DIAGRAM table was added to allow ODBC reporting against multiple graphical reports.

For much more information on this functionality, sign up for my Advanced ODBC Erwin Reporting Webinar.

Do you think these changes will help you with your modeling endeavors? Feel free to leave your comments and questions.