Project Perspectives

The purpose of project perspectives is to make it easier to work with large projects. In big projects, it can be hard to maintain a good overview and find an individual object quickly.

The idea is that you can create different perspectives on a project. A perspective is a subset of the project objects that relate to a specific area or task. For example, you could create a “finance” perspective that contains all the tables, dimensions and cubes that are related to finance. When this perspective is active, anything else will be hidden.

A perspective can be static or dynamic. In dynamic project perspectives, any object that is related to an object already in the perspective will be included in the perspective. This is very useful if you have e.g. a SSAS Multidimensional cube, semantic model or Qlik model for sales and want to see the tables, fields etc. related to that. Creating a dynamic perspective based on the cube or model will give you that overview in seconds.

Adding a Project Perspective

To add a project perspective, follow the steps below.

1. In the Solution Explorer, right click Project Perspectives and click Add/Edit Project Perspectives.
2. Click Add . A new column is added to the grid with the name “Perspective” in the Perspective Name row. Double-click the name to edit it and click outside the field when you have finished typing. Select Dynamic Perspective if you want the new project perspective to be dynamic. You can change this setting at any time.
3. Each Qlik model, SSAS Multidimensional cube, data warehouse and business unit is listed in the first column of the grid. Click the + beside one of the objects to show the child objects. Select the Qlik models, cubes, dimensions and tables you want to include in your project perspective. If you add an object to a dynamic perspective, dependent objects will be added automatically. You can recognize dynamically added objects by the checkbox with an indeterminate state.
4. Click OK. The new project perspective now appears under Project Perspectives in the Solution Explorer.

Adding objects to and removing objects from a perspective

You can add most objects - tables, fields, dimensions, cubes - to a perspective. The same object can be added to as many perspectives as you want to.

In the Project Perspectives menu, the perspectives that the object is a part of are checked. If a dot is displayed next to the perspective name, the object is part of a dynamic perspective because it is related to an object that is explicitly part of the dynamic perspective.

To add an object to a perspective

• Right click the object, click on Project Perspectives and click on the name of perspective you want to add the object to.

To remove an object from a perspective

• Right click the object, click on Project Perspectives and click on the name of checked perspective you want to remove the object from.

Note: You cannot remove an object from a dynamic perspective if it is not explicitly selected to be part of the perspective. In other words, if there is a dot next to the perspective, it is not an explicit part of the perspective and cannot be removed.

Activating a perspective

To activate a perspective

• In the Solution Explorer, expand Project Perspectives and double-click the perspective you want to activate OR right-click the perspective and click Use Project Perspective.

Deactivating all perspectives

To deactivate the active perspective

• In the Solution Explorer, expand Project Perspectives and double-click the perspective with (Active) postfixed OR right-click the perspective and click Use Project Perspective.

Sorting objects in a perspective

Objects within a perspective can be sorted by the execution order or alphabetically. To change the sort order of the active perspective

• Right click the currently active perspective and select either Sort by execution order or Sort alphabetically. The chosen sort order will be saved for each perspective.

Note: It is not possible change the order of objects manually while a perspective is active.

Deploying and executing a perspective

Perspectives can be deployed and executed just as other objects. This enables you to easily work with a subset of you project from source to execution. You can deploy and/or execute a perspective in two ways:

• In the Solution Explorer, under Project Perspectives, right click the perspective you want to deploy and/or execute and click Deploy, Execute or Deploy and Execute.
• You can also add a perspective to an execution package, for example if you want to execute the perspective on a schedule.