Opening and closing a map

Map Designer Express displays one map at a time within the tab window. This map is called the current map (sometimes called the "currently open map"). You can control which map is the current map with the following Map Designer Express procedures:

Opening a map

A map must be open in Map Designer Express before you can view its information in a Map tab or modify this information. When Map Designer Express opens a map, if the validate map when open preference is enabled, it first performs a set of validations on this map.

Note:
You can specify whether Map Designer Express validates a map when it opens it, with the option Open Map: validate map when open. By default, this option is enabled.

If this preference is enabled when a map that uses big business objects (that is, thousands of attributes) is opened, Map Designer Express may take a long time to open the map. You can change the setting of this option on the General tab of the Preferences dialog. For more information, see "Specifying General Preferences".

The validations that Map Designer Express performs on the map are as follows:

Map Designer Express provides the following ways to open a map:

Opening a map from a project in System Manager

Perform the following steps to open a map from a project in System Manager:

  1. Open the Open a Map from a Project dialog in any of the following ways:

    Result: Map Designer Express displays the Open Map dialog.

    Figure 24. Open Map dialog

  2. Select the project.
  3. Select the map's name from the list of maps currently defined in the project in System Manager.

    Tip: To locate a particular map name, enter its name in the Find field. The up and down arrows scroll through the map list.

  4. Click the Open button to open the map from the project.

Opening a map from a file

A map definition can be stored in XML format in an operating-system file called a map definition file. To create a map definition file, you save the map as a map design file ( .cwm) in Map Designer Express. For more information, see "Saving a map to a file".

When you open a map definition file, you open the map in Map Designer Express.

Perform the following steps to open a map definition file:

  1. Open the Open a Map from a File dialog in any of the following ways:

    Result: The Open file with Map dialog box appears.

  2. Select the map definition file you want to open. The file must be a

    .cwm file created by Map Designer Express.

    Result: Map Designer Express opens the map definition file. The map information appears in the Map tabs.

    Important:
    Opening the map in Map Designer Express does not automatically save the map to the project. To save this map to the project, continue to step 3.
  3. Save the map to the project in System Manager. For more information, see "Saving a map to a project".

    Rule: You must save the map to the project in System Manager for it to be compiled. To compile the map, select Compile from the File menu. For more information, see "Testing maps".

Closing a map

Perform one of the following actions to close the current map, which is displaying in the tab window:

Note:
If you have changed the current map since it was last saved, Map Designer Express displays a confirmation box to confirm the map closure.

Copyright IBM Corp. 1997, 2003