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System Settings

EVA Netmodeler has many System Settings which can be used to tailor the application to your needs. EVA Netmodeler was designed in a way that allows flexibility and ease of use. Installation and user specific settings were not "hard coded" into the application  but are held in the EVA Netmodeler repository. Authorised users can alter the settings. This should be done with care, since many of these will globally alter the behaviour of EVA Netmodeler for all users.  

Depending on your user access level, some of the settings may be hidden  from you. This is because changing some of the settings may induce undesirable  results if not handled by an experienced EVA Netmodeler user. Generally the  responsibility of these global settings should be given to a knowledgeable and trained EVA Netmodeler System  Administrator.

This section covers the following topics:

• Types of System Settings
• Settings Groups
• Getting detailed help on System Settings
• Concepts that Apply to Multiple Settings
• The Self Resolving Setting Feature
• Specializing settings for individual users or user groups

Types of System Settings

There are currently two types of system settings:

• System Settings
  This is the most common type of system setting. The values of these settings are generally very short - up to 20 characters is the norm, but they may be up to 255 characters long
• Long System Settings
  This type of setting is used for settings that require more than 255 characters. They are typically used for fragments of HTML or Style Sheets which are used to generate context specific output or behaviour. For example, there is a system setting that contains the style sheet used for formatting the web sites generated by EVA Netmodeler.

Settings Groups

Settings are grouped to make them easier to work with. The various groups are listed below:

• General Settings deal with installation and environment issues, such as default colors, location of images, how EVA Netmodeler is invoked by the web server, fonts, image display sizes etc.
• Logon messages
• Browser Related Settings affect the behaviour and appearance of the related browser
• Calendar Browser
• Cross Reference Browser
• Content Browser
• Graphical Browser
• Graphical Modeler
• Item Browser
• Master Detail Browser
• Menu Browser
• Report Writer
• Spatial Browser
• Tree Browser
• Type Browser
• Unified Browser
• Worksheet Browser
• Help Settings determine what files EVA Netmodeler invokes to provide help
• Events Settings affect the way that EVA Netmodeler detects and processes events
• Filters Settings control appearance and editing of filters
• Method Settings control the operation of the method generator by specifying which relationships and types it should work with
• Security Settings determines which attributes, types and relationships are used to implement security
• Template Settings control paths and directories for storage and management of templates and cloned documents
• Calendar Settings control which types, relationships and properties are relevant for the Calendar Browser
• Error handling settings determine how EVA Netmodeler handles and reports errors
• Directory Settings relate to the EVA Netmodeler directory feature that allows serving content from designated directories on the server

Getting detailed help on System Settings

System settings are added on an ongoing basis as the tool develops and new features are added. System settings are therefore documented directly in the EVA Netmodeler repository. To view the system settings, open the Unified Browser (or your favorite browser!), select the "Archi Settings Group" from the Item Type drop-down list. The select the desired settings group from the Item drop-down list. This will show a list of the system settings in the setting group in the bottom left-hand pane. Click the (=) button next to any of the settings to view its details in the bottom right-hand pane.

Concepts that Apply to Multiple Settings

• Colors are indicated to the browser by specifying an HTML color value. This takes the form of three values for Red, Green and Blue (RGB) respectively. Color values are expressed as the hexadecimal equivalent of the three numbers, where each number can be in the range of 0-255 (decimal) translating to 00 to FF (hexadecimal). They are preceded by a hash sign (#). Higher values are brighter, thus white would be expressed as: #FFFFFF - all colors at full intensity, while black would be: #000000 - all colors at zero intensity. Red would be: #FF0000, Blue #0000FF, Green #00FF00 and so on. Obviously using less extreme values and mixing colors allows many subtle colors to be achieved.
  
  For convenience, EVA Netmodeler also allows you to express colors using popular names, such as "blue"; "orange"; "gold"; "light gray" etc.
• Times in EVA Netmodeler are expressed as numbers with a separator e.g. 08h00; 17h00 or 08-00; 17-00 etc. Note that a 24 hour clock is used. Time values should be expressed as two digits either side of the separator.

The Self Resolving Setting Feature

This EVA Netmodeler system settings feature that enables a setting to dynamically resolve its own value with reference to other setting values.

This feature is useful when you have many settings that all have the same root value, which you may often want to change. It makes sense to store the root value in a separate setting and allow all other settings to build their values from this root value because it implies that you can change the value of many setting automatically by changing the root value.

For example, if we have the following settings and values:

Setting Name	Value
ComparePath	C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\htdocs\Archi\CompDir\
ImagePath	C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\htdocs\Archi\Graphics\
SystemImagePath	C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\htdocs\Archi\Graphics\System\

The root value for all these settings is:

C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\htdocs\Archi\

Now imagine that you wanted to change the path, you would have to change all these settings individually or use the "Bulk Settings Change" utility.

How to use the feature

By using this feature, we could create a new setting as follows

Now we could change the setting from our previous example to include the new GlobalPath setting name delimited with a leading and training tilde as follows:

Whenever the settings are used in EVA Netmodeler, it will detect that it needs to resolve the setting values (by the presence of a tilde in the value). It would therefore replace the "~GlobalPath~" string with the value of the GlobalPath setting and use the result of this operation as the setting value.

The operation that resolves the value is recursive, which means you could have as many layers of resolution as you want, but you should be aware that there will obviously be a performance trade-off as you add more layers.

Specializing settings for individual users

Individual user can be permitted to specialize settings that relate to their individual session. For example, the SpatialDefaultItem governs which spatial item type will be used as the default when a user opens the spatial browser. Certain users may have a particular preference for this setting based on their role or even their short term tasks. To enable a user to specialize a setting value, define an instance of the value specialised by relationship between the setting and the ArchiUser. This creates a UserInfoSetting info node on the relationship between the setting and the user. The UserInfoSetting.SettingValue can then be set to the desired value for that user.

The UserInfoSetting.SettingValue will be used for that use instead of the ArchioSystemSettings.SettingValue when the user next logs on.