Best practices ESR in Eclipse – Part 4: Content organization

This is the fourth blog in a blog series about new capabilities in ESR in Eclipse. If you want to get an overview of all features that have been shipped with SAP Process Orchestration 7.5 SP02, check out the blog Best practices ESR in Eclipse – Part 1: Overview of new capabilities with 7.5 SP02. In the current blog, I will cover features around content organization and related topics within ESR in Eclipse.

Hide empty nodes

In previous ESR in Eclipse versions, all object type nodes were displayed in the navigation pane even if no such objects existed. Now, empty nodes are hidden, as you can see in figure below. So, you don’t need to open each node to find out whether objects exist or not.

Folders

You can use folders in order to organize your design objects. At this, nested structures are supported, i.e., folders containing folders. Furthermore, you can move objects across folders via drag&drop. In our case, I like to create a folder where I store all expense report related objects. Select a namespace, and select New –> Folder from the context menu.

In the upcoming dialog, maintain a folder name, here Report, and click on button Finish.

As you can see in the navigation pane, a new folder with name Report has been created. It is placed below the node with name Folders. You can drag&drop design objects to this folder.

As you can see in the navigation tree, I moved the data types Report and Reports to the folder.

Copy of ESR objects

When creating new objects, instead of starting from scratch, you can copy existing content. This may save some time if the objects resemble each others. This feature is already supported from 7.5 SP0 on. In my case, I like to create an outbound service interface based on an existing inbound service interface. Select the object, and select Copy Object from the context menu.

Maintain a new and unique name, here I change from Inbound to Outbound. If you copy the object into another SWCV or Namespace, you can select the With All Dependent Objects check box within the copy options section. In our case this would also copy the related message types and data types. Click on button OK.

As you can see in figure below, a new service interface has been added. Next, I would need to open the service interface and change the mode from inbound to outbound (not shown here).

Import external definitions

If schema definitions already exist, you can import external definitions into the ESR so that they can be used for mappings for instance. Both are supported XSDs and WSDLs. This feature is already supported from 7.5 SP0 on. In our case, I do have schema definitions for interfacing with Concur in XSD format. Select the External Definitions node and select Import External Definition from the context menu. Note, in our case the External Definitions node is shown since two external definitions already exist. Otherwise, select the namespace and select entry Import –> External Definition from the context menu (not shown here).

In the upcoming dialog, you can add multiple files in either XSD or WSDL format. Here, I have added 3 files in XSD format. Click on button Next.

On the next screen, I can select the external definitions which should be imported. Then, click on Next to trigger the import.

The next screen shows errors or warnings that eventually happened during the import. In our case, the import went through. Click on Finish to close the dialog.

As you can see from the navigation pane, the 3 new XSDs have been added.

Search

In order to search for any object in the ESR in Eclipse, you can use its search functionality. This feature is already supported from 7.31 SP16 on. You can open the search dialog either via the ESR Search button in the right upper corner of the navigation pane …

… or from the standard Eclipse search menu. Here, select ESR Search below the torch icon.

On the search dialog, you can narrow down the search based on object type, SWCV, language (in case of text attributes), and further attributes such as name, namespace, changed by, changed on, description, etc. Here, I am looking for any object within the Concur SWCV that ends with the term Report and has been changed by user demo. Once done, click on button Search.

The search result is displayed in tab ESR Search Result. I would like to navigate to the found data type. Double click on the data type.

This brings up the data type in a new pane. In order to locate the data type within the navigation tree, click on the Link with Editor button on the right upper corner of the navigation pane.

This expands the navigation pane and highlights the respective data type.

Where-used

Before I change an existing object, I like to know which other objects would be impacted. This feature is already supported from 7.5 SP0 on. Select the object, here the previously found data type Report, and select Where Used from the context menu.

On the Where-Used Result tab all objects are displayed that refer to the very object either directly or indirectly.

In the next blog Best practices ESR in Eclipse – Part 5: Change list, I will cover capabilities about handling of change lists. A list of all blogs in the blog series can be accessed from here Best practices ESR in Eclipse – Part 1: Overview of new capabilities with 7.5 SP02.