Tag: Progressive Assurance

Module Administration

The management of modules, copying of views and attributes are all essential tasks for a database administrator and yet there is no in built functionality in DOORS Classic that lets you do these simple tasks.

This utility brings together all administration type functions. It works both at the project level – allowing you to manipulate modules – and at the module level which provides access to attributes and views.

Project Level:

The utility is opened via the DOORS main menu. It automatically determines the current project folder based on what is open and/or selected but the user can navigate to any other folder.

It then lists the module names within the project. Selecting a row will display the description and the prefix. The attributes or views in the selected module are also automatically listed. There is a further filter for attributes into normal, DXL or Module attributes.

Double click on the row and the module is opened but you don’t have to open the module in order to work on it. All operations take place in Read only mode unless a save is required in which case the utility takes care of this, checking for locks etc.

The box at the top displays a running display of the success or failure of any operation.

There are a number of operations that the user can perform such as loading up a standard set of attributes from an XML file which is great for pre-populating a module.

The user can also delete attributes or views for a selection of one or more modules at the same time which is extremely useful for making changes to all modules across a project.

The Project Report button produces an Excel report of the views and attributes for all modules in the project.

A DXL utility to manage modules within a project in DOORS 9.x
Module Administration – Project Level

Module Level:

The same utility also works at the module level where the user has access to shareable edit, and can manipulate attributes and views. For example, delete one or more attributes, convert all ticked DXL attributes for the current module into text or delete one or more views.

Attributes can be copied to other modules (with the relevant checks that they do not already exist in the target module) but perhaps the most useful is the copy view function where a selected view can be copied to one or more modules. This functionality is not easily performed in DOORS Classic.

There is also a button to reset all private views in a selected module into global access views.

A DXL utility to manage modules attributes and views in DOORS 9.x
Module Administration – Module Level

Managing Users and Groups

Although DOORS permits the database administrator to set up groups, unfortunately there are no in built report functions that let you understand, for example, which users are in what group, or the permissions a particular user has in a module.

This utility provides the DOORS database administrator with a series of very comprehensive reports. Most of the reports are simple text lists, displayed in the text console, with the data separated by tabs so that it can be directly copied into Excel.

A few of the reports ( marked with an (E) ) are very sophisticated and will export directly into an Excel worksheet including coloured backgrounds for specific functionality. Some of the more important uses are as follows:

  • Provide a list of the Users for ‘cut and paste’ into excel;
  • Provide a list of each group and the members in Excel;
  • If emails have been entered then provide a mailing list;
  • Extract the RMCDA access permissions for Users, Groups in each Module.
A utility to provide a listing of all Users and Groups within a DOORS database

The Excel listing of the groups and the members is worthy of specific mention as it is extremely useful in large projects where there are hundreds of users and groups. Here is an example listing:

An Excel output generated from all Users and Groups within a DOORS database
An Excel output generated from all Users and Groups within a DOORS database. Groups are listed across the top and there is a row for each user. Details of the user are listed and ‘X’ identifies whenever a user is in a group.