Linking Trees

Building Hierarchy Trees

Counting Logical Files

A Link joins two nodes on different trees. It records the relationship between the nodes and enables you to later analysis the application based on selected nodes and their Links, using criteria that you define. Examples of the types of analysis are:

• Report the Functional Size of all Processes that access (are Linked to) the Invoice Data Group.
• Report the Functional Size of all Processes and data groups that are to be developed in the first version of the software (i.e. are Linked to the Mandatory attribute).
• Report all the errors for the Invoice Processes that have been allocated a severity 1 rating. (All Notes Linked to the invoice Processes that have been Linked to the severity 1 attribute.)

To set Links:

• Display two trees by clicking the appropriate tabs (they must be different trees, you cannot set Links within the same tree).
• Choose Link mode from the menu (Trees–Link) or the Link Mode icon at the top of the screen (HINT: icon looks like a bent paperclip) .
• On the left side select the node to Link to and click on the checkbox next to the node (or nodes) or press the space bar to set the Link. A red tick is displayed in the linked node.

To display the trees on the opposite sides, use the ‘flip’ icon along the top of the screen and display the converse view. Alternatively select Trees – Flip Views menu or press CTRL + Tab.

Hint: If you are linking the same node to many nodes on other trees it is easier to locate the tree with the node to be linked on the Left side tree and use the Set All option found by Right clicking the mouse and selecting Links from the Pop-up menu.

Hint: The flip icon can also be used to refresh the screen.

To Set and Clear Links quickly:

• Select the node you want to link Right Click the mouse and select Link – Set All and SCOPE will set links to all the children of the Parent Node. Select Link - Clear All, to unlink all child nodes.
• Use the Search and Replace function to find and Flag all nodes that satisfy specific search criteria. Then use the Link – To Flagged Nodes to automatically link the currently selected LHS node to all the flagged nodes on the RHS Tree. To link to everything that is not currently flagged select the Link – To Un-flagged Nodes option. You can selectively clear current links by selecting either the Link – Clear Un-flagged Nodes or Clear Flagged Nodes options.
• If an existing node already has all the links that you would like a new node to inherit, then they can be cloned to one or many other nodes. Select Edit – Copy target node and select to Paste the links (Edit – Paste Links ALT-L). You can select to paste the links to the just the target node or to all of its descendents.

Linking Processes to the Data Groups they access is a special case of cross-reference linking in SCOPE.

The colour of the link (tick box) can be changed to provide a dynamic display of the way each process accesses the data group. I.e. As you link a Data Group / RET or DET to a process, the screen dynamically displays the access type. The first mouse click to set up the link defaults to a red to indicate the Data is READ ONLY by the process, a second mouse click changes the link to a blue to designate the data group is UPDATED and the next click resets the status to the Unlinked state of a blank box . As you move down the Function dynamically displays the type of access using different coloured text.

To Quickly Link Process and Data Groups, RETs and DETs right click on a Parent node or the Root node either on the Function Tree or the Data Tree and select to Link – Set All (Read Only) or Set All (Update). SCOPE will link to all Child nodes but will NOT overwrite existing links. If you want to change the existing links then select to Clear All, then select to Link as Update or Read Only.

Copy ‘Links Only’ from another Node

If you have already set up the links for a node and then realise that other nodes need the same links, you can selectively copy just the links so that the other nodes can inherit some or all the links.

A dialogue box displays to allow you to paste selected link types (process, attribute, notes and data) and to restrict the paste its children (i.e. from current position down). The default <OK> pastes all link types just to the target node.