Once the published data has been loaded and consolidated, users will want to find, view, and navigate the consolidated data. To do this, you must create methods and menus, and then configure user access for the relationships for navigation. Details of how to do this are provided in How to Configure the GUI Model, however overall guidelines are provided here.
You can make the CDW GUI easier for users to navigate by doing the following things:
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Providing find and query menu items for the main objects; for example, for equipment and instruments but not nozzles.
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Try to use CDW only interfaces when querying for data to ensure that the queries are more efficient.
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Generate the forms for all objects.
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Use form lists or the view related items method to display the primary object information and some information on related objects. This may be more convenient for the more complex objects, for example, to display equipment and a list of its nozzles.
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Create a column set to display the key information for objects commonly queried. Avoid adding every property and relationship to the custom column set, as too much information, especially relationships, can slow down client performance.
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Manage user access to expose relationships as required.
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Create edge definitions to navigate across intermediate objects, such as process points. For example, create edges to navigate from equipment to pipelines to instruments.