Models Canvas

The Models canvas draws the Data Marts of one storage as an entity-relationship diagram. Every Data Mart is a card, and every relationship between two Data Marts is an arrow. Use it to see how your model fits together and to spot Data Marts that nothing joins to. It also lets you read the fields of a Data Mart without opening it.

Where to find it

Open Data Marts → Models and pick a storage. The canvas remembers the storage you looked at last. It also keeps the card positions you arranged by dragging, per storage, in your browser.

Click a card to highlight every relationship it takes part in. Click it again, or the empty canvas, to clear the highlight. The arrow icon on a card opens that Data Mart in a new tab.

Toolbar

• Search highlights the Data Marts whose title matches and zooms to them. It does not remove the other cards.
• Relationships filter offers three views. All Data Marts shows everything. With relationships only keeps the Data Marts that join at least one other visible Data Mart. Without relationships only keeps the Data Marts that no visible Data Mart joins to. Those are candidates to connect, or to clean up. The filter counts only the relationships between Data Marts the status filter leaves visible. In a Published only view, a Data Mart whose only relationship leads to a draft counts as unconnected.
• Status filter shows all Data Marts, published ones only, or drafts only.
• Actions runs bulk operations on the Data Marts the canvas currently shows. Those are publish, delete, Data Quality and Data Last Updated checks. It also holds the Export submenu.

The page URL carries the filters and the search (rel, status, search). Share the link to share the filtered canvas.

Canvas settings

The gear button on the canvas opens the view settings. They are preferences stored in your browser and do not change the model itself. The Joinable Data Marts diagram offers the same settings and stores its own values.

• View picks the card density. Compact cards show the title, the source badge, the status and the field count. Detailed cards add the field rows of the Data Mart’s Output Schema, primary keys first. Long schemas collapse behind a +N more fields toggle.

• Layout algorithm lays the graph out horizontally or vertically. Picking an algorithm re-runs the layout and drops the card positions you dragged.

• Show join fields labels every arrow with its join conditions (source_field = target_field).

• Object labels picks what every card shows:

  • Input source shows the badge with the definition type (VIEW / TABLE / SQL / PATTERN / CONNECTOR).
  • Field count shows the number of fields in the Output Schema.
  • Status shows the published/draft indicator.
  • Field aliases leads each field row in the Detailed view with the Output Schema alias, when the field has one. Untick it to see the technical field names instead. Hover a row to read both.
  • Field descriptions adds the Output Schema description under each field in the Detailed view, when the field has one. The line shows one row of text. Hover it to read the whole description.

  Check all turns every label back on. Uncheck all leaves only the titles. In the Detailed view it also leaves the technical field names and their types.

Notes

• Field rows, aliases and descriptions appear once the canvas has loaded the Data Mart details. On a very large model, the cards fill in a few seconds after the diagram appears.
• The Joinable Data Marts page shows the same kind of diagram for the relationships of a single Data Mart.