User Story scenarios

User story is one of the very important component for users who capture requirements with Visual Paradigm. Each user story features a set of properties for you to describe the different aspect of a user problem or requirement. A property is called scenario. Each scenario involves a set of steps, recording the preferred system behavior in accomplishing that specific user story.

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Why the relationships between entities not point to FK column?

tomcat-thumbEntity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is a tool for model the structure of a database. It mainly consists of the entity (database tables) as well as the relationships between them. Unlike the traditional UML diagrams, the relationship in ERD not just indicate the entitles are related to each other, it also specifies which column(s) between the source and target entities are linked, which also known as the primary key and foreign key relationship. People often want to have the relationships stick to its associated columns. But instead of manually adjust the connection point for the relationship connector, Visual Paradigm can automatically do it for you.

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Why there are “a” and “M” icon showing in my shapes?

Sometimes you may notices that the elements on diagram having a small “a” and “M” icon showing on its top left corner. What does this mean?

"a" and "M" indicator on diagram

“a” and “M” indicator on diagram

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How to highlight element on diagram using Open API

tomcat-thumbVisual Paradigm’s Open API not just provides a way to extend the functionality of Visual Paradigm, but also offer you a door to integrate Visual Paradigm with 3rd party software. The integration is not necessary to single direction, from model to 3rd party software, but also from your 3rd party software to models in your Visual Paradigm project. i.e. models being updated by external system. In this situation an indication on diagram could be very helpful to indicate what model elements being updated. Starting from v13.1 Visual Paradigm’s Open API support highlight diagram elements on your diagram. This can help you to indicate what element was being updated by your 3rd party software. In this article we will show you how to highlight the elements in your diagrams. Read more

How to format the date property obtained from diagram or model element

Date is a very important property in model since it recorded the timestamp when a diagram or model element was being created or modified. In Visual Paradigm all diagrams and most of the model elements are having date property for storing its creation date time, as well as the last modified date time. In this article we will show you how to retrieve the date time property and format it into human readable text. Read more

Accessing Model Hierarchy Recursively

When working with a nested model, you may want to access and printout the details of elements within a hierarchy recursively. Since the level of model can be unlimited, it is hard to write a custom element template with a chunk of code repeated a certain number of time, not to mention this way of coding will make the template messy and hard to maintain. To solve this problem you can form a recursive template call by applying the concept of template referencing. If you are a programmer, the idea is exactly the same as a recursive method call in programming. All you need to do is to add the element in the appropriate place in the template, to instruct the template engine to process the same template, forming a self-loop. We will walk you through the details in this article.

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How to override operations form superclass

Method overriding is a very common technique in object-oriented programming. It allows developer deliver specific implementation of a method in the subclass although it already defined by the superclass. When overriding a method the subclass replace the implementation in superclass by providing a method which exactly same as the one in superclass, i.e same name, parameter and also the return type. In Visual Paradigm you don’t need to redefine the operation in subclass to model the override. You can simply do it in one click inside the specification dialog. To override the operation: Read more

Reuse Constraint Parameters in SysML Parametric Diagram

The Parametric Diagram in SysML is a restricted form of the Internal Block Diagram. It shows the mathematical relationships between its modeled elements. Wish Parametric Diagram you can precisely define the details of a constraint in your system. The Parametric Diagram cannot live on its own, it must be relay on a SysML block, typically is a constraint block. In Visual Paradigm you won’t need to re-create the constraint parameters when you elaborate the constraint block with Parametric Diagram. In this article we will show you how you can reuse the constraint parameters when modeling in Parametric Diagram. Read more

Building Document with Custom Templates

Although Doc. Composer comes with a complete set of built-in element templates, you may still want to customize or even to write your own templates for maximizing the efficiency of document design. You can accomplish this by writing and programming your own element templates.

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Launch Visual Paradigm with Specific Diagram Opened

You can open a specific diagram of a Visual Paradigm project through Command Prompt. It would be especially helpful when you need to open one of various diagrams from a project.

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