Exercise 27.1 - Syndeia VOLTA Integration

Owned by Debesh Roy Chowdhury
Last updated: Jun 13, 2023 by Lonnie VanZandt
8 min read

Objectives:

The new learning objectives of this exercise are to create a repository connection to a VOLTA repository on the Syndeia Web Dashboard (SWD), view the repository including properties, relations, and search, and create a reference connection.

Preparation:

This exercise assumes the student has

·       Syndeia Cloud 3.5 installed with a valid user account,

·       A valid user account to a VOLTA repository, and

·       A valid user account to at least one other online repository, e.g. JIRA.

The user can use any VOLTA repository they have available.  Because the content of your VOLTA repository will be different, the specific examples in the following exercise instructions are only a guide and example for your actions. It is generally advisable to carry out these exercises in a non-production repository, a “sandbox”, set up for training and practice purposes.

See Video 1.9 for an introduction to the Syndeia Web Dashboard.

Background - VOLTA:

As envisioned by Intercax, the Digital Thread is composed of inter-model connections between models in different repositories, which Syndeia creates and manages, and intra-model connections between elements in the same repository, which the individual tool creates and manages. As of Syndeia release 3.5, the Syndeia Web Dashboard can extract and display some model information from the VOLTA repository. Figure 1 shows a tree view of this information, with labels identifying the VOLTA element types. Note the different icons. The label color coding indicates how the VOLTA element type is mapped to the Syndeia Cloud element types: Repository (green), Container (red), and Artifact (blue).

 

In the case of the Syndeia VOLTA integration, the Relations table (Step 7) and the Digital Thread Explorer (Step 9 onwards) can display some intra-model connection types between Artifacts, shown in Table 1, as well as inter-model connections. The intra-model connections are not permanently part of the Syndeia Cloud graph; they are extracted and displayed as needed.

 

This information is important in formulating and interpreting Syndeia graph queries. A more complete diagram of the VOLTA data model as it is understood by Syndeia is available through the web dashboard help menu on the left.

 

Table 1

VOLTA Intra-Model Relation Types

Relation Type

Artifact Types Connected

Related Model

Session → Model

Contains

Folder → Folder or File

Figure 1: Tree view of VOLTA repository

Exercise:

  1. Log on to the Syndeia Cloud Web Dashboard (see Video 1.9) and click on the Repositories icon on the left border (Figure 2).

Figure 2 : SWD Repositories page (initial) – Repositories icon outlined in red

2. If no repository connection to VOLTA is available, select VOLTA in the left column, then click the + icon at the top of the column. Complete the form (consult your VOLTA administrator for the property values in your organization) and click Create (Figure 3).

Figure 3 : Adding a VOLTA repository connection

3. If a VOLTA repository connection already appears under VOLTA, but you need to add your own access credentials, select the VOLTA repository and click the Gear icon at the top of the column. Complete username and password and click Update (Figure 4).

Figure 4 : Updating VOLTA repository info

4. Your repository should load. Expand it to show Projects, Models, Plans and Sessions, as in Figure 5. See Background section for discussion of VOLTA artifact types.

Figure 5 : Viewing VOLTA repository contents on Repositories page

5. On the right border, there are three icons, labeled Details, Relations and Search. Select a VOLTA element in the Tree View column (Beam_Optimization_Process_Model in our example) and click on the Details icon. A Detail list appears to the right as in Figure 6. Scroll down and review the attributes of the VOLTA element that are available to Syndeia 3.5, including name and externalKey, which is the unique version-independent identifier in the VOLTA repository. Click the Details icon again to close the list.

Figure 6 : SWD Repositories page, Details list (Details icon highlighted in red)

6. Click the Search icon on the right.

  1. In the Search window, use VOLTA Simple or VOLTA Advanced from the Select type pull down menu.

  2. From the Select item type pull down menu, select the VOLTA artifact type to be searched for. In our example in Figure 7, this is Folder.

  3. Using VOLTA Simple to Search by text, enter a text string in the Name Contains field from the name of the VOLTA folder to search for. In our example, we entered DEMO and clicked Search. The result(s) of the search are shown on the right, as in Figure 7.

  4. To Search by ID, enter a text string with the VOLTA ID in the ID field. The version-independent VOLTA ID is the same as the externalKey on the Details page (Figure 6).

  5. If you select the VOLTA Advanced option before searching, you may enter a query in VQL (VOLTA Query Language) for the search.  See VOLTA documentation for a discussion of VQL.

  6. Click the Search icon again to close the Search window.

Figure 7 : SWD Repositories page, Search feature (Search icon and search result highlighted in red)

7. Select a VOLTA element in the Tree View column ( Beam_Optimization_Process_Mode in our example) and click on the Relations icon on the right.

  1. In the Relations window (Figure 8), you will see a list of Inter-model relations, from the selected VOLTA item to other non-VOLTA models, and a list of Intra-model relations, from the selected VOLTA item to other VOLTA items in the same VOLTA repository. In this example, there are one Inter-model relations to a file in GitHub.

Figure 8 : Syndeia Web Dashboard Repositories page, Relations lists (Relations and Add icons highlighted in red)

8. To create a reference connection between the selected VOLTA item and an element in another repository, click on the + (Add) icon highlighted in Figure 8. A Create Reference Relationships window will appear as in Figure 9.

  1. At the top, either select an existing Syndeia project to save the connection within (DZSB26 in our example) or create a new project. See Video 1.5 on creating Syndeia projects for further discussion.

  2. Under Select target artifact, choose the other repository to which the new connection will be made. In our example this is JIRA @ Intercax.

  3. If you have valid access to this repository, its contents will appear at the bottom of the window. Scroll down to the element that will be the target of the new connection and click the checkbox beside it. This is JIRA issue ADS-27 in our example.

  4. Each Syndeia connection has a directionality. The Select direction pull down menu higher up in the window allows the directionality to be set as desired before the connection is made.

  5. Click on the Create Reference Connection button at the bottom. The new connection should appear in the Inter-model list after the Reload icon is clicked.

  6. Click the Relations icon again to close the Relations window.

Note: In Syndeia release 3.5, it is not possible to create Model Transform inter-model connections or intra-model connections through the SWD. Some of those use cases will be added in future releases.

Figure 9 : Syndeia Web Dashboard- Create Reference Relationship window

9. The Digital Thread Explorer or DTE (Figure 10 - Figure 12) provides interactive visualization of inter-model and intra-model connections in a graph format. To launch DTE, right-click an item in the Tree View and choose Graph View. In our example, this is a VOLTA Model, Beam_Optimization_Process_Mode. Initially, it appears as a single node in the Graph View, as in Figure 10.

Figure 10 : Digital Thread Explorer, stage 1

10. Click on the node (it will show a black border when selected), right-click on it and choose Expand. If this element has any connections, they should appear as in Figure 11. In our example, the initial element had three intra-model connections to other VOLTA items (red circles, 3 sessions) and two inter-model connections, to a JIRA issue (blue) and a GitHub file (gray).

Figure 11 : Digital Thread Explorer, stage 2

11. If I right-click on one of the new nodes (JIRA issue ADS-27) and expand it, additional edges and nodes are displayed (Figure 12), including inter-model connections to a Collaborator review (light blue) and two SysML elements (purple) and an intra-model connection to another JIRA issue (blue). This process can continue until all connections are displayed.

Figure 12 : Digital Thread Explorer, stage 3

12. VOLTA items in either the Graph View or the Tree View offer direct access to that element in the VOLTA repository. If I right-click on Syndeia Test Product 1 in the diagram in Figure 12 and choose More Details, my browser will open to the same element in VOLTA as in Figure 13 (I may be required to log-in to VOLTA first).

Figure 13 : VOLTA browser interface launched from Syndeia Web Dashboard

Optional Step - VOLTA Advanced Search

13. VOLTA allows users to search for items using custom queries. The syntax of these queries is described in the VOLTA API documentation here: https://volta-release.esteco.com/api-doc/index.html#/v1/guides/search. Syndeia users working with VOLTA can use the same queries to search for VOLTA items in the Syndeia Web Dashboard. There are four (4) query keywords provided by the VOLTA search capability - type, tag, options, and release. The type query keyword is specified by selecting one of the types in the Select item type menu in the search pane of the Syndeia Web Dashboard, as shown below. The others can be specified in the Query field, as shown in the examples below. The syntax of the queries is the same as described in the VOLTA API Docs (link above).

In this step, we present a few examples of queries that the reader can follow and try on their VOLTA server.

Example 1 - Search for items of type File that have a tag with the name important applied to them.

Example 2 - Search for items of type File that have a tag with the name important applied and whose names contain the word Readme.

Example 3 - Search for items of type Project that have names containing the word proplusion

Example 4 - Search for items of type File that have a tag with the name workflow_based applied and metadata option with id 14 applied.

Example 5 - Search for items of type Workflow Model that have names containing the word Drone.