Exercise 1: Setting up your environment

In this first exercise, you will open the Data perspective and view data preferences. The Data perspective in the workbench is where you do all of your work in this tutorial. The Data perspective consists of several default views, including:

As with any perspective in the workbench, you can customize the Data perspective to include other views or exclude these or other default views. In this tutorial you will use the Data perspective default views.

Opening the Data perspective

To open the Data perspective:

  1. Click Window > Open Perspective > Other from the main menu bar.
  2. In the window that opens, select Data, then click OK.

    If you do not see Data in the list, click Show all.

The Data perspective opens with the default views. If you have not previously created any data projects, the Data Project Explorer is blank. The Database Explorer contains a connection to the Derby SAMPLE database, which is included with this product. Expand the Connections folder to see database connections.

Screen capture showing the Database Explorer with the Derby SAMPLE database connection as described in the last steps.

Viewing data preferences

You can customize the workbench settings for data design and development in the Preferences window. In this tutorial, you will view preferences but will not change them.

To view data preferences:

  1. Click Window > Preferences from the main menu bar.
  2. Expand the Workbench node, and click Capabilities.

    The Capabilities preference page opens. You can use this page to simplify the product interface by enabling or disabling product components so that only the perspectives, views, and menu actions that you are interested in are available. In this case you want to verify that the Data capabilities are enabled. If you were not interested in other capabilities such as Java Development or Plug-In Development, you could clear the check box next to those capabilities to disable views and menu actions that are associated with them.

  3. Verify that Data is checked.

    Screen capture showing the Capabilities page with the Data check box checked, as described in the last step.

  4. Back in the list of preferences pages, expand the Data node to see the available options.

    There are many preferences pages that are associated with data design and development. View the pages under the Data node to see available options. In this tutorial, you do not need to modify any preferences. In later exercises, you will transform a logical data model into a physical data model. You could use the Data Type Map page to change the default data type mappings between logical and physical data models.Screen capture showing the Preferences page, as desribed.

  5. Click OK to close the Preferences window.

Now you are ready to begin Exercise 2: Importing the required resources.