4.3 Table Editor
The Table Editor
(
Figure 4–43) provides a tabular
or form-based view on the objects of a given type in a graph. In the editor, the
objects of a graph are represented as rows and properties of the objects form
columns. Thus, the Table Editor provides an easy way to view all the information
about objects in a graph in a compact form.

Figure 4–43. Table Editor.
With the Table Editor you
can view and edit properties of objects as well as make or view explosions and
decompositions between several graphs. Hence graphs such as requirements
specifications or problem lists, which are neither graphical diagrams nor
matrices, are most suitable for the Table Editor.
The Table Editor window (as shown in
Figure 4–43) consists of three parts:
menu bar, toolbar and the table view itself, which is the main area for creating
and managing objects. Within the table view, each object is a row and each cell
is a property value. If the property value contains a newline character, it will
be displayed as a grey paragraph mark (pilcrow).
You can search within any of the columns of a table by
clicking in that column and typing the first letters of the desired property
value. The search begins at the current row, and highlights the first match
after it. To move to the next match, press Alt+Down, and similarly
Alt+Up / Alt+Home / Alt+End for the previous, first or last match.
Pressing Space will select the highlighted element and clear the search string.
To include a special character like Space or Enter in the search string, hold
down Alt as you type it.
Unlike other editors, the Table Editor only has an action
toolbar: as each table can only show objects of one type, there is no need for
the objects or relationship types toolbars. The commands on the action toolbar
are (from left to right):
Generate,
Print,
Cut,
Copy,
Paste,
Undo,
Redo,
Autowidth,
Fit
Window to Table and
Delete. Depending on the modeling language used,
there may still be additional quick-access buttons for various generators on the
right side of the toolbar. The visibility of the toolbars in each Table Editor
window can be set from the
View | Toolbars menu. Default visibility and
layout of toolbars can be set in the Options Tool (see Section
3.1.3).