Hello again,

Well, I finally had some time to think about this some more and I have to admit that what I am looking for wouldn't be that straightforward to code.

I still don't have a drawing or a sketch, but let me see if I can explain it reasonably clearly. I'm a visual person, so, in the end, I am looking for a graphical representation of all of the rules and policies for a given connector. In my mind, I was thinking of having a traditional flowchart but anything that helps show the overall flow would suffice. This would be convenient not just for programmers, but often, we are required to produce documents for directors, CIOs, and the like. Having 400 pages of “If X, then Y” does little for them. But a nice picture says the thousand words J

So, let's take as an example an AD connector. Let's presume that this AD connector was extremely simple and had two policies in the subscription channel:

Policy 1: If objectclass equal to User and Surname is changing, then set destination attribute sn equal to "hello world".

Policy 2: If objectclass equal to Group, then veto.

This might generate some images as follows:

The problem becomes that even within a single policy, the number of rules could make this flowchart pretty messy very quickly. If we were generating an interactive chart, then one could drill down by clicking on the components and having the chart expanded. Even nicer, you guys have the simulator within Designer. One could imagine linking the simulator to such a flowchart and whatever path a provided XML event would follow might become highlighted. So, for instance, if I submitted a Group modify event, the “Group decision diamond” through to the “B” above would be highlighted. If we had a very complex decision tree, then we would visually see right away the path that the XML would follow.

Anyways, back to documentation. As a first stab, having each rule become its own mini flowchart like above might be interesting and then possibly having all of the rules within a given policy show up together.

Does this make any sense to you? It’s amazing how email can sometimes be really limiting…

Marc

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Harmon [mailto:stharmon@novell.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 10:32 AM
To: Marc Huffstickler
Subject: RE: Requesting Information for Designer DocumentGenerationEnhancement Request

Thanks Marc. I look forward to your results...

-Stephen

>>> "Marc Huffstickler" <marc.huffstickler@mcgill.ca> 1/2/2006 4:23 pm

>>>

Hey,

I'll try and come up with something even if I have to draw it by hand

and

scan it.

I'll dig around as well. We have a Novell consultant helping us with

our

deployment and for our AD connector he drafted a flowchart which I

really

liked. So, when I find it, I'll send it to you.

Thanks for following up on this,

Marc

-----Original Message-----

From: Stephen Harmon [mailto:stharmon@novell.com]

Sent: Monday, December 19, 2005 1:06 PM

To: Marc Huffstickler

Subject: Requesting Information for Designer Document

GenerationEnhancement

Request

Hi Marc,

I received the following request you had suggested.

"This isn't so much a question as a Designer enhancement request, it

would be nice to see a component of the documentation tool that

generates flowchart like images using the driver logic, so converting

"if-then" to diamonds, etc."

It would be nice to get a complete example of what you envision on

this

enhancement request. Could you please provide this to me? Even a

drawing would help.

Thanks,

Stephen