In this example we take an extended tour of the Project pane, engaging in a variety of simple but typical moves that are illustrated step by step. Before proceeding, please review the View - Panes - Project topic.
When any text is entered into the filter box only those components which contain the text will be displayed. Case is not significant.
We start with a project containing tables and queries. The moment we enter a c character in the box only those components which contain a c character anywhere in their name will be displayed.
As we continue by adding an a character only those components which contain the two-character sequence ca anywhere in their names will be displayed.
All that matters is that the sequence exists in the name of the component and not whether it is in the beginning, middle or end of the name. For example, entering the two-character sequence og will cause only the component named Catalog to appear.
The filter button chooses what types of components are shown in the Project pane and also how the displayed components are sorted. The default is All components sorted by their names.
Click the Filter button and choose what type of component to display.
If we click on Queries only query components will be shown. All other components in the project will be hidden.
The + icon next to the
System Data folder disappears
when we filter the display to show only queries. That is because
there are no queries in the System Data
folder.
Tech Tip: It is not a good idea to delete folders with the Filter button set to something other than All. We might think a folder is empty because there is no + icon next to the folder, but the lack of the + icon simply indicates there are no components of the type that has been chosen for display by the Filter button.
If we change the Filter button setting to Tables, only tables in the project will be displayed.
The + icon appears again next to the System Data folder. That indicates there are tables within the System Data folder.
To continue with the tutorial we will change the Filter button setting back to the default, All, so that all components will be displayed in the Project pane.
Manifold uses the usual Copy and Paste commands to manipulate components.
Click on a component to highlight it.
Click on the Copy button or enter Ctrl-C to copy the component to the Windows Clipboard.
Click on the Paste button or enter Ctrl-V to paste the component from the Windows Clipboard.
A duplicate will appear using the same name with an incremental number appended. The first copy of a component called Name is Name 2, the second copy is Name 3 and so on.
To delete a component, click on it to highlight it and then click on the Delete button or press the Delete key on the keyboard.
By default, Manifold pops open a confirmation dialog. We can turn that off either by checking the Never show this again box or in the Tools - Options dialog.
Projects will often have hundreds of components and can have thousands of components when large data sources are linked into the project. To keep order with so many components we should organize them using folders.
Choose File - Create- New Folder to create a new folder or right-click onto blank space in the project and...
...in the resulting menu choose Create - New Folder.
We name the new folder My Queries.
Press Create Folder and the new folder appears in the Project pane.
We will now move all of the queries into the new folder. To make it easier to highlight the queries we first use the Filter button to display only queries.
Only queries now are displayed. We click on the first query in the list to highlight it.
Next we scroll down to the bottom of the Project pane and Shift-click on the last query in the list.
That highlights all of the queries.
We can now drag and drop the highlighted queries into the My Queries pane.
Another way to have done the same thing would have been to highlight all the queries, to Cut the queries with a Ctrl-x and finally to Paste the queries into the folder with a Ctrl-v
If we click on the + icon next to the My Queries folder we can see that the queries have indeed been moved into that folder.
We click on the - icon to close the My Queries folder.
Now we will move all Tables into their own folder.
We reset the Filter button to display only Tables.
We Right-click onto white space in the Project pane and in the context menu choose Create - New Folder.
We provide a name, My Tables, and press Create Folder.
The new folder is created in the Project pane.
We click on the first table in the list and then scroll down and Shift-click on the last table to highlight all of the tables.
We can then drag and drop the highlighted tables to move them into the My Tables folder. Or, once the tables were highlighted we could have pressed Ctrl-x to Cut then and then clicked on the My Tables folder to highlight it and then pressed Ctrl-v to Paste the tables into that folder.
A + icon appears next to the My Tables folder to indicate the folder now has contents.
We will reset the Filter button to All to show all components.
A + icon appears next to My Queries as well since now that folder also has contents to show.
We can expand the two folders to see that the My Tables folder now contains all the tables and the My Queries folder contains all of the queries.
We will create one more folder to show how nested folders, that is, folders within other folders, work.
Right-click on an empty part of the Project pane and choose Create - New Folder from the menu or from the main menu choose File - Create - New Folder.
We specify the name Nwind Database since all of our example components have been taken from the nwind example database. Press Create Folder.
That creates a new folder in the project.
We now click on the My Queries folder and then we either Ctrl-click or Shift-click on the My Tables folder to highlight both folders.
We can then drag and drop both highlighted folders into the new Nwind Database folder. As an alternative we could have used Ctrl-x to Cut followed by a Ctrl-v to Paste into the Nwind Database folder.
The folders along with all of their contents have been moved to within the Nwind Database folder.
We can open the Nwind Database folder and then open the My Tables folder within to see the tables have indeed been moved along with the folder that contains them.
Folders are simply an organization convenience. The folder hierarchy is not part of references to components in SQL, where the path is based on data source hierarchy and does not include folder names.
For example, if we have a data source called RemoteProject in our project the path to the mfd_root table within the System Data folder inside that data source is [RemoteProject]::[mfd_root], it is not [RemoteProject]::[System Data]::[mfd_root].