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Chapter 10. Teiid Designer Ui Reference

10.1. Teiid Designer Perspectives
10.1.1. Teiid Designer Perspective
10.1.2. Opening a Perspective
10.1.3. Further information
10.2. Teiid Designer Views
10.2.1. Model Explorer View
10.2.2. Outline View
10.2.3. Teiid View
10.2.4. Properties View
10.2.5. Description View
10.2.6. Problems View
10.2.7. Search Results View
10.2.8. Datatype Hierarchy View
10.2.9. Teiid Model Classes View
10.2.10. System Catalog View
10.2.11. SQL Reserved Words View
10.2.12. Model Extension Definition Registry View (MED Registry View)
10.2.13. Guides View
10.2.14. Status View
10.2.15. Cheat Sheets View
10.3. Editors
10.3.1. Model Editor
10.3.2. VDB Editor
10.3.3. Model Extension Definition Editor
10.4. Teiid Designer Main Menu
10.4.1. File Menu
10.4.2. Edit Menu
10.4.3. Refactor Menu
10.4.4. Navigate Menu
10.4.5. Search Menu
10.4.6. Project Menu
10.4.7. Metadata Menu
10.4.8. Run Menu
10.4.9. Window Menu
10.4.10. Help Menu

Teiid Designer utilizes Eclipse's Workbench environment which controls visual layout via perspectives. A perspective defines the initial set and layout of views and editors. Within the application window, each perspective shares the same set of editors. Each perspective provides a set of functionality aimed at accomplishing a specific set of tasks.

Perspectives also control what appears in certain menus and toolbars. They define visible action sets, which you can change to customize a perspective. You can save a perspective that you build in this manner, making your own custom perspective that you can open again later.

The Teiid Designer perspective provides access to fundamental model editing and management capabilities. This perspective includes 5 main UI components or groups of components as shown below. They include:


Views are dockable windows which present data from your models or your modeling session in various forms. Some views support particular Section 10.3.1, “Model Editor” and their content is dependent on workspace selection. This section summarizes most of the views used and available in Teiid Designer. The full list is presented in the main menu's Window > Show View > Other... dialog under the Teiid Designer category.


Teiid Designer allows you manage multiple projects containing multiple models and any corresponding or dependent resources. The Model Explorer provides a simple file-structured view of these resources.

The Model Explorer (shown below) is comprised of a toolbar and a tree view.


The toolbar consists of nine common actions:

  • Preview Data - Executes a simple preview query (SELECT * FROM ).

  • Sort Model Contents - Sorts the contents of the models based on object type and alphabetizing.

  • Refresh Markers - Refreshes error and warning markers for objects in tree.

  • Back - Displays the last "Go Into" location. (See Eclipse Help)

  • Forward - Displays the next "Go Into" location. (See Eclipse Help)

  • Up - Navigates up one folder/container location. (See Eclipse Help)

  • Collapse All - Collapses all projects.

  • Link with Editor - When object is selected in an open editor, this option auto-selects and reveals object in Model Explorer.

  • Additional Actions

The additional actions are shown in the following figure:


If Show Model Imports is checked, the imports will be displayed directly under a model resource as shown below.


The Teiid View provides a means to display and manage Teiid server instances and their contents within Designer.

To show the Teiid View click "Window > Show View > Other..." to display the Show View dialog. Choose "Teiid Designer > Teiid" view and hit OK.


To create a new Teiid instance, either right-click select New Teiid Instance action or click the same action button, , in the toolbar.

You'll get the New Teiid Instance dialog shown below.


The dialog contains two three sections. The top panel contains host name and an option to customize the new Teiid instance label in the teiid view. The second panel Teiid Admin Connection Info, pertains to the connection information required to connect to the admin URL of your installed Teiid instance. The operations Designer exposes deal with deploying and undeploying VDBs as well as managing your test data sources required by those VDBs to successfully connect and query data through the Teiid runtime engine.

The third panel, Teiid JDBC Connection Info, provides for entering the connection information for that same Teiid instance. This information is required for Designer to make JDBC connections during execution of the Preview Data feature.

Enter valid Host, Port, User name and Password information, edit any options and click Finish.

Actions available in this view include:

  • New Teiid Instance - Create a new instance of a running Teiid server

  • Teiid Server Properties - View and edit properties of an existing Teiid instance

  • Reconnect - Reconnect and refresh contents of the selected Teiid instance

  • Delete - Disconnect and delete the selected Teiid instance

  • Execute VDB - Creates a JDBC Teiid connection profile and opens the Data Tools Database Development perspective

  • Undeploy VDB - Removes the selected VDB from the Teiid instance

  • Create Data Source - Launches the New Data Source wizard

  • Delete Data Source - Removes the selected Data Source from the Teiid instance

If you chose the Use a custom label option, the text entry field will enable as shown below.


The Problems View displays validation errors, warnings, or information associated with a resource contained in open projects within your workspace.


By default, the Problems View is included in the Teiid Designer perspective. If the Problems View is not showing in the current perspective click Window > Show View > Other > Teiid Designer > Problems.

There are 5 columns in the view's table which include:

  1. Description - A description of the problem preceded by a severity icon (i.e., error , warning , or info ).

  2. Resource - The name of the resource.

  3. Path - The project name.

  4. Location - The object within the resource that has a validation error.

  5. type - Type of validation item.

To open Teiid Designer's MED Registry view, select the main menu's Window > Show View > Other... and select the Teiid Designer > Model Extension Registry view in the dialog.

The Model Extension Registry view shows the currently registered MEDs. Registered MEDs can be applied to models in the workspace (see Section 4.3, “Managing Model Object Extensions”). The Model Extension Registry view looks like this:


You can also open the view by selecting the MED Editor toolbar action in the right corner of shared sub-editor header section.

For each registered MED, the namespace prefix, namespace URI, extended model class, version, and description is shown. In addition, a flag indicating if the MED is built-in is shown. The Model Extension Registry view has toolbar actions that register a workspace MED file, unregister a user-defined MED, and copy a registered MED to the workspace. All these actions are also available via a context menu.

A MED registry keeps track of all the MEDs that are registered in a workspace. Only registered MEDs can be used to extend a model. There are 2 different types of MEDs stored in the registry:

  • Built-In MED - these are registered during Designer installation. These MEDs cannot be updated or unregistered by the user.

  • User-Defined MED - these are created by the user. These MEDs can be updated, registered, and unregistered by the user.

Note: When a workspace MED is registered it can be deleted from the workspace if desired. The registry keeps its own copy. And a registered MED can always be copied back to the workspace by using the appropriate toolbar or context menu action.

Editors are the UI components designed to assist editing your models and to maintain the state for a given model or resource in your workspace. When editing a model, the model will be opened in a Model Editor. Editing a property value, for instance, will require an open editor prior to actually changing the property.

Any number of editors can be open at once, but only one can be active at a time. The main menu bar and toolbar for Teiid Designer may contain operations that are applicable to the active editor (and removed when editor becomes inactive).

Tabs in the editor area indicate the names of models that are currently open for editing. An asterisk (*) indicates that an editor has unsaved changes.


By default, editors are stacked in the editors area, but you can choose to tile them vertically, and or horizontally in order to view multiple models simultaneously.


The Teiid Designer provides main editor views for XMI models and VDBs.

The Model Editor contains sub-editors which provide different views of the data or parts of data within an XMI model. These sub-editors, specific to model types are listed below.

  • Diagram Editor - All models except XML Schema models.

  • Table Editor - All models.

  • Simple Datatypes Editor - XML Schema models only.

  • Semantics Editor - XML Schema models only.

  • Source Editor - XML Schema models only.

The VDB Editor is a single page editor containing panels for editing description, model contents and data roles.

In addition to general Editors for models, there are detailed editors designed for editing specific model object types. These "object" editors include:

  • Transformation Editor - Manages Transformation SQL for Relational View Base Tables, Procedures and XML Web Service Operations.

  • Choice Editor - Manages properties and criteria for XML choice elements in XML Document View models.

  • Input Editor - Manages Input Set parameters used between Mapping Classes in XML Document View models.

  • Recursion Editor - Manages recursion properties for recursive XML Elements in XML Document View models.

  • Operation Editor - Manages SQL and Input Variables for Web Service Operations.

The Model Editor is comprised of sub-editors which provide multiple views of your data. The Diagram Editor provides a graphical while the Table Editor provides spreadsheet-like editing capabilities. This section describes these various sub-editors.

The Diagram Editor provides a graphical view of the a set of model components and their relationships.

Several types of diagrams are available depending on model type. They include:

You can customize various diagram visual properties via Diagram Preferences.

Each diagram provides actions via the Main toolbar, diagram toolbar and selection-based context menus. These actions will be discussed below in detail for each diagram type.

When a Diagram Editor is in focus, a set of common diagram actions is added to the application's main toolbar.


The Table Editor provides a table-based object type structured view of the contents of a model. The figure below shows a relational model viewed in the Table Editor. Common object types are displayed in individual folders/tables. All base tables, for instance, are shown in one table independent of their parentage.


You can customize Table Editor properties via Table Editor Preferences.

These are the primary features of the Table Editor:

  • Edit existing properties.

  • Add, remove or edit objects, via the main Edit menu and context menu ( Cut, Copy, Paste, Clone, Delete, Rename, Insert Rows ).

  • Paste information from your clipboard into the table.

  • Print your tables.

When a Table Editor is in focus, the Insert Table Rows action is added to the application's main toolbar.

A few Table Editor actions are contributed to the right-click menu for selected table rows. These actions, described and shown below include:

  • Table Paste - Paste common spreadsheet data (like Microsoft Excel) to set object properties.

  • Table Editor Preferences - Change table editor preferences, including customizing visible properties.

  • Insert Rows - Create multiple new sibling objects.

  • Refresh Table - Refreshes the contents of the current Table Editor to insure it is in sync with the model.


A VDB, or virtual database is a container for components used to integrate data from multiple data sources, so that they can be accessed in a federated manner through a single, uniform API. A VDB contains models, which define the structural characteristics of data sources, views, and Web services. The VDB Editor, provides the means to manage the contents of the VDB as well as its deployable (validation) state.

The VDB Editor, shown below, contains a upper and lower panels. The upper panel contains the Models tab and an Other Files tab. The lower panel contains tabs for managing Data Roles, the VDB Description and Translator Overrides.


You can manage your VDB contents by using the Add or Remove models via the buttons at the right.

Set individual model visibility via the Visibility checkbox for each model. This provides low level data access security by removing specific models and their metadata contents from schema exposed in GUI tools.

In order for a VDB to be fully queryable the "Source Name", "Translator" and "JNDI Names" must have valid values and represent deployed artifacts on your Teiid server.

If you have Designer runtime plugins installed, and have a Teiid server running, you can select a source model in the VDB Editor and right-click select "Change Translator" or "Change JNDI Data Source" which will allow you to select any applicable artifacts on your server.


If you have a default Teiid server instance defined and connected the translator and JNDI table cells will contain drop-down lists of available translator and JNDI names available on that server.

Teiid Designer provides a means to create, edit and manage translator override properties specific to a VDB via the Tranlator Overrides tab. A translator override is a set of non-default properties targeted for a specific source model's data source. So each translator override requires a target translator name like "oracle", db2, mysql, etc. and a set of non-default key-value property sets.

The VDB Editor contains a Tranlator Overrides section consisting of a List of current tranlator overrides on the left, a properties editor panel on the right and Add (+) and Remove (-) action buttons on the lower part of the panel.


To override a specific translator type, select the add translator action (+). If a default Teiid server instance is connected and available the Add Translator Override dialog (below) is presented, the user selects an existing tranlator type and clicks OK. Note that the override is only applicable to sources within the VDB, so be sure and select a translator type that corresponds to one of the VDB's source models. The properties panel on the right side of the panel will contain editiable cells for each property type based on the data-type of the property. (i.e. boolean, integer, string, etc.).


If no default Teiid server instance is available, the "Add New Translator Override" dialog is presented. Enter a unique name for the tranlator override (i.e. "oracle_override"), a valid translator type name (i.e. "oracle") and click OK. The properties panel on the right side of the panel will allow adding, editing and removing key-value string-based property sets. When editing these properties all values will be treated as type string.


The MED Editor is a multi-tabbed editor and is used to create and edit user-defined MEDs (*.mxd files) in the workspace. The MED Editor has 3 sub-editors (Overview, Properties, and Source) which share a common header section. Here are the MED sub-editor tabs:

The GUI components on the Overview and Properties sub-editors will be decorated with an error icon when the data in that GUI component has a validation error. Hovering over an error decoration displays a tooltip with the specific error message. Those error message relate to the error messages shown in the common header section. Here is an example of the error decoration:


The MED sub-editors share a header section. The header is composed of the following:

Below is an example of the shared header section which includes an error message tooltip.


There are 8 categories of actions on Teiid Designer's main menu bar.


The File menu provides actions to manage your workspace resources.


The New > sub-menu provides specific actions to create various generic workspace resources as well as Teiid Designer models and VDBs.


  • The File menu contains the following actions:

    • New > Model Project - Create user a new model project.

    • New > Folder - Create new folder within an existing project or folder.

    • New > Model - Create a new model of a specified model type and class using the Chapter 2, New Model Wizards.

    • New > Virtual Database Definition - Create a new VDB, or Virtual Database Definition.

    • Open File - Enables you to open a file for editing - including files that do not reside in the Workspace.

    • Close (Ctrl+W) - Closes the active editor. You are prompted to save changes before the file closes.

    • Close All (Shift+Ctrl+W) - Closes all open editors. You are prompted to save changes before the files close.

    • Save (Ctrl+S) - Saves the contents of the active editor.

    • Save As - Enables you to save the contents of the active editor under another file name or location.

    • Save All (Shift+Ctrl+S) - Saves the contents of all open editors.

    • Move… - Launches a Refactor > Move resource dialog..

    • Rename… (F2) - Launches a Refactor > Rename resource dialog if resource selected, else in-line rename is preformed.

    • Refresh - Refreshes the resource with the contents in the file system.

    • Convert Line Delimiters To - Alters the line delimiters for the selected files. Changes are immediate and persist until you change the delimiter again - you do not need to save the file.

    • Print (Ctrl+P) - Prints the contents of the active editor. In the Teiid Designer, this action prints the diagram in the selected editor. Allows control over orientation (portrait or landscape), scaling, margins and page order. User can also specify a subset of the pages to print (i.e., 2 through 8).

    • Switch Workspace - Opens the Workspace Launcher, from which you can switch to a different workspace. This restarts the Workbench.

    • Restart - Exits and restarts the Workbench.

    • Import - Launches the Import Wizard which provides several ways to construct or import models..

    • Export - Launches the Export Wizard which provides options for exporting model data.

    • Properties (Alt+Enter) - Opens the Properties dialog for the currently selected resource. These will include path to the resource on the file system, date of last modification and its writable or executable state.

    • Most Recent Files List - Contains a list of the most recently accessed files in the Workbench. You can open any of these files from the File menu by simply selecting the file name.

    • Exit - Closes and exits the Workbench.

The Edit menu provides actions to manage the content, structure and properties of your model and project resources. The figure below represents the Edit menu presented when a metadata model is selected.


  • The Edit menu contains the following actions:

    • New > Child - This menu is created dynamically to support the creation of whatever types of child objects can be created under the selected object.

    • New > Sibling - This menu is created dynamically to support the creation of whatever types of sibling objects can be created under the same parent as the selected object

    • New > Association - This menu is created dynamically to support the creation of whatever types of associations can be created with the selected object.

    • Modeling > - This menu is created dynamically. Various modeling operations are presented based on selected model object type.

    • Undo - Reverses the effect of the most recent command.

    • Redo - Reapplies the most recently undone command.

    • Cut - Deletes the selected object(s) and copies it to the clipboard.

    • Copy - Copies the selected object(s) to the clipboard.

    • Paste - Pastes the contents of the clipboard to the selected context.

    • Paste Special... - Provides additional paste capabilities for complex clipboard objects.

    • Clone - Duplicates the selected object in the same location with the same name. User is able to rename the new object right in the tree.

    • Delete - Deletes the selected object(s).

    • Select All - Select All objects in current view.

    • Rename - Allows a user to rename an object in the tree.

    • Find/Replace - Launches dialog that can be used to search in the current text view, such as a Transformation Editor.

    • Open - Opens the selected object in the appropriate editor.

    • Edit - Opens the selected object in the appropriate specialized editor, such as the Choice Editor or Recursion Editor..

    • Add Bookmark... - This command adds a bookmark in the active file on the line where the cursor is currently displayed.

    • Add Task... - This command adds a task in the active file on the line where the cursor is currently displayed.

The Search menu presents several specific search options.


Teiid Designer contributes a sub-menu (i.e. Teiid Designer > ) to the main search menu, as shown above.


The Metadata menu provides Teiid Designer-specific actions.