About the Class Structure viewer

Purpose

Use the Class Structure viewer to display and explore the inheritance relationships among all the classes in your application. (In contrast, the Class Inheritance display, accessed from the Application Explorer, presents the ancestors and inheritance relationships for a single class.)

Starting the tool

1. Ensure that the application to be presented is the current application, or select File > Open > Work Pool > work pool name to establish the application as current.
2. Select Application > Class Structure to start the viewer.

Interacting with the display

The display presents classes in the application in tiers, with the ultimate base classin the top tier, and classes which share a name prefix in separate tiers.

• Click the green expand () or collapse () icon to show or hide a tier. Each orange oval identifies a pattern segment of a class name. For example, the class Work-Object- appears as three segments, presented side by side:
  
• Click a + sign or the orange shape to display the immediate children of a class (based on pattern inheritance). If one class has many immediate children, only some appear, with a curved line (a fisheye control). Click an arrowhead at the top or bottom of the curved line to scroll up or down to view other children.
• Click a - sign to hide the immediate children.
• Click a shape to identify the immediate parent (directed or parent) of that class. A solid black arrow indicates pattern inheritance.
• Click the Home icon () to redraw the original display for the application.
• Click Print to print the diagram, or Close to exit the display.

Notes

Don't confuse this Class Structure diagram, which provides a way to explore relationships among all classes you can access, with the different but similar-looking Class Inheritance diagram, which shows the ancestor classes of a single class and the order that they are searched during rule resolution.

This display requires the Adobe Flash Player plug-in.

	directed inheritance, Flash player, pattern inheritance
	Class hierarchy and inheritance — Concepts and terms About the Class Inheritance display

Tools, accelerators, and wizards