Date Profiler
Use this topic for a simple page, dialog or other UI without any sections or tabs. You must describe every field and option on the page.
To configure this topic so it generates correctly in the help output, perform the following steps:
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Configure the
Sect1
element:-
Create the context-sensitive topic as a
Sect1
. -
Title the context-sensitive topic to reflect the name of the UI, using a simple noun phrase with headline-style capping. In the page title, include the generic noun. For example, Preferences Page, Preferences Dialog, Editing Window, Resource Catalog. If this is a topic that you are migrating, use the same title as before..
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Set the
HelpTOC
attribute toTopicOnly
, so this topic does not appear in the TOC. -
Modify the sample
OutputFileName
attribute of the element to include the name of your UI and optionally include the product name. For example, if your product is Oracle XYZ Server and the UI is the Preferences Dialog, modify the value of this attribute fromcs_pagename1.htm
to something likecs_preferences.htm
orxyz_cs_preferences.htm
. -
Modify the
HelpTopicID
attribute to match the topicID for the Help icon, button, or UI.Use the topicID provided by the engineer as the value for the
HelpTopicID
attribute for theSect1
topic. If converting help from another format, use the existing HelpTopicID. Alternatively, you can assign a topicID to the topic and then provide the engineer with the topicID you assigned. The important thing is to make sure the topicID you assign to the topic in FrameMaker matches the topicID assigned to the UI, Help icon or button by development.
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Configure the
InformalTable
element with the following guidelines:-
Modify the
Summary
andTitle
attributes as appropriate for the table. -
In the Element column, enter all the elements or options in the UI that should be documented, using the
HelpPara
element. In the Element column, do not bold the UI element. -
To indent the text in the Element column in order to groups the elements as they display in the UI, edit the
Role
attribute of theHelpPara
element. Select Level1 to indent the text from the left margin. You can indent up to four levels to reflect the organization of options displayed in the UI, if needed, using Level1, Level2, Level3, and Level4. -
In the Description column, use the
Para
element, not theHelpPara
element. You will not indent text in this column. Describe the option or element in detail. If you reference UI elements other than the one you are describing, use the Bold emphasis. If you provide a code snippet or code reference, apply the Code emphasis. -
In the Description column, include More inline links to conceptual topics in administrator, developer and user guides in the documentation library; include How? inline links to individual task topics in these books. Do not include inline links for other information. Instead, include those other links under the Related Topics heading, as described below.
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To insert More and How? link to books, use the Xulink element and for the Attribute value, enter olink:DOCID (for example, olink:ASADM11113). For more detailed information about linking, see the topic Applying TopicID Values and Adding Links to Books in the online help standards.
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In both the Element and Description columns, add inline graphics where necessary, as described below. Use inline graphics sparingly, only as needed, to provide UI overviews and define unlabeled elements on screen. Icons and buttons are not required in context sensitive online help.
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Inline graphics are limited to a height of 22 pixels. If you insert an image that exceeds 22 pixels in height, the image will be reduced and distorted in the OHW/OHJ help JAR, so do not insert it. There are no specific restrictions to the pixel width of an image, however images that fill more than half a column would be better inserted as informal figures in the introductory paragraphs.
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To insert an inline graphic, follow these guidelines:
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Select the location where you want to insert the inline graphic.
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In the Elements window, select InlineGraphic, and click Insert. The Attributes for New Element window appears.
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Type the AltText value. This is a required attribute and the book will fail if you do not enter some text. Click Insert Element. The Import dialog appears.
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Select the graphic to be imported from the graphics folder. The Import Graphic Scaling dialog appears.
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Select 72 dpi. Click Set. The graphic is inserted.
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Using the spacebar, insert one space before or after the graphic as needed, so there is a single space between the image and text A single space is required between an image and text before or after it (identical to the space between words). No extra space should be added before an image at the beginning of a line.
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To include the
RelatedTopics
element and links, follow these guidelines:-
The RelatedTopics element is the last element in a Sect1 element and is mandatory. It is included in the template and does not need to be inserted.
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The only child element available under the RelatedTopics element is the Para element. You can add multiple Para elements under the RelatedTopics element, in addition to those already in the template.
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Add any topics about technologies mentioned, if they are not covered by inline How? and More links.
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Add additional cross references to chapters or Sect1s in the documentation library.
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To insert link to books, use the Xulink element and for the Attribute value, enter olink:DOCID (for example, olink:ASADM11113). For more detailed information about linking, see the topic Applying TopicID Values and Adding Links to Books in the online help standards.
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The Date Profiler analyzes a Date attribute, and shows the distribution of date values in that attribute in terms of:
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Day of the week
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Day of the month
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Day of the year
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Month
-
Year
A Valid/Null view is also included. Invalid dates are by definition Null, as any data value in a DATE attribute must be a valid date.
Use the Date Profiler to see if there are any unusual trends in your Date attributes - for example to see if there is a default date such as 01/01/1970 that has commonly been used instead of a real date value.
The following table describes the configuration options:
Configuration | Description |
---|---|
Inputs |
Specify a single Date attribute. |
Options |
None. |
Outputs |
Describes any data attribute or flag attribute outputs. |
Data Attributes |
The data attributes are:
Note that splitting out the date values in the way above may be useful for downstream processing, for example, if you want to write out the data and perform matching based on the day, month and year values in separate attributes. |
Flags |
None. |
The Date Profiler looks for trends in batches of records with date values. It therefore requires a batch of records to produce its statistics. It must run to completion before its results are available, and is not suitable for a process that requires a real time response.
When executed against a batch of transactions from a real time data source, it will finish its processing when the commit point (transaction or time limit) configured on the Read Processor is reached.
The following table describes the statistics produced for the Day in Week view:
Statistic | Description |
---|---|
Day in week |
The day of the week (Sunday-Saturday). |
Count |
The number of records with dates that fell on that day of the week. |
% |
The percentage of records with dates that fell on that day of the week. |
The following table describes the statistics produced for the Day in Month view:
Statistic | Description |
---|---|
Day in month |
The day of the month (1-31). |
Count |
The number of records with dates that fell on that day of the month. |
% |
The percentage of records with dates that fell on that day of the month. |
The following table describes the statistics produced for the Day in Year view:
Statistic | Description |
---|---|
Day in year |
The day of the year (for example, 1st Jan). |
Count |
The number of records with dates that fell on that day of the year. |
% |
The percentage of records with dates that fell on that day of the year. |
The following table describes the statistics produced for the Month view:
Statistic | Description |
---|---|
Month |
The month (January - December). |
Count |
The number of records with dates that fell in that month. |
% |
The percentage of records with dates that fell in that month. |
The following table describes the statistics produced for the Year view:
Statistic | Description |
---|---|
Year |
The year. |
Count |
The number of records with dates that fell in that year. |
% |
The percentage of records with dates that fell in that year. |
The following table describes the statistics produced for the Valid/Null view:
Statistic | Description |
---|---|
Valid |
The number of records with a valid date in the DATE attribute analyzed. |
Null |
The number of records with a null value in the DATE attribute analyzed. |
Clicking on the Additional Information button from the Valid/Null view shows the statistics as percentages of the total number of records analyzed.
Examples
In this example, the Date Profiler analyzes the distribution of dates in an attribute storing the date of the last payment made by a Customer. In this case, the user is most interested in the distribution of dates across years. The year summary:
Year | Count | % |
---|---|---|
2003 |
369 |
18.4 |
2002 |
303 |
15.1 |
2001 |
250 |
12.5 |
2000 |
219 |
10.9 |
1999 |
174 |
8.7 |
1998 |
159 |
7.4 |
2004 |
152 |
7.6 |
1997 |
126 |
6.3 |
1996 |
103 |
5.1 |
1994 |
73 |
3.6 |
1995 |
42 |
2.1 |
1993 |
27 |
1.3 |