Shared Collections (Groups) and Secondary Hierarchies

A shared collection can hold in its members list a number of design elements from any combination of hierarchic levels, they may also span Multiple Databases (MDBs). You can use any appropriate design operation to act upon all of these individual elements simply by carrying out the operation on the shared collection.

Shared collections are particularly useful when there is a need to create a secondary hierarchy of elements. For example a set of elements for a project may span more that one site, if this is the case it is difficulty to identify where in the hierarchy these elements occur. With a shared collection you can easily query its members and see the hierarchy of elements contained within it.

A shared collection is a Model database element in its own right, and is therefore stored automatically for use in later sessions when you save database changes.

The Elements which make up a shared collection within the Model database are shown below:

GPWL (Group World) Is a top level administrative element. A GPWL may hold multiple GPSET (Group Set) elements.

GPSET contains groups of items (GPITEM). A GPSET element has Name, DESC, and FUNCTION attributes.

GPITEM These are elements within a database which are to be grouped under a Group Set (GPSET). Elements from different databases can all be grouped into the same Group Set. A GPITEM has the following attributes Name, DESC and SITEM.

It is possible to nest Group Sets within other Group Sets. To achieve this structure a GPSET can own another GPSET or a GPITEM can point back onto a GPSET. The following figure illustrates this: