Virtual Documents

virtual_documents

Virtual documents enable you to structure and filter your RTF reports by selecting, grouping and ordering individual packages independent of the organization of the Project Browser. You can create separate virtual documents defining, say, Requirements, Use Cases or Design elements of a project, or you can combine these separate reports - retaining their own different formats - into a single generated document with common headers and footers and a central contents list. This combined document could apply your corporate standards.

You generate virtual documents in Enterprise Architect from individual Model Document elements. You can also, if required, combine several Model Documents under a Master Document package element.

Each Model Document element identifies its own template; for example, a specifically-designed Requirements template for a Requirements document, or a Use Case template for a section on Use Cases. The template is identified in a Tagged Value, and defines the content as either:

  • A list of packages (defined as attributes) in whatever order or combination is most appropriate to your requirements - you can easily add or delete packages as necessary; or
  • A standard model search (defined as Tagged Values) created within the Model Search facility (note that diagram searches are not supported); when you generate the document, this search captures the required data throughout the model, and populates the document.

Notes:
  • In a Model Document, you should not define both a list of packages and a search; if both are present, when you generate the document Enterprise Architect works from the package list only.
  • You cannot use RTF Bookmarking in Master Document elements, which effectively replace RTF Bookmarking in Word.
     
    RTF Bookmarking requires each bookmark to be unique. When you generate a report with a standard RTF template (including in a single Model Document element), each bookmark is unique and there is a 1:1 association between the Elements-details being generated and the elements in the repository. As Master Documents are intended to contain multiple sub-documents, the association ceases to be 1:1. There is no simple method that enables the generated data to be uniquely identified directly in association with the original element.

You can control the sequence in which information is presented in the document; see the Document Order topic.

Tip:

You can create as many Model Documents as required, for as many combinations of information as required.

The Master Document element contains its own template Tagged Value, which defines the headers, footers and central contents list. You can import your corporate standards template and edit the Tagged Value to identify that.

Document Elements

Along with the Document Artifact element, the Master Document and Model Document elements are available from the Documentation page of the Enterprise Architect UML Toolbox (on the Toolbox, select More Tools | Documentation).

Doctool

When you drag the Master Document and Model Document elements onto a diagram, the following symbols display, respectively:

MasterDoc                               d_ModelDocElement