Feature deprecation: Reports
- Juha Korpela (Unlicensed)
UPDATE 2023-11-15 - The “Reports” feature has now been removed with Ellie 5.0 release. This article has not been updated, but you can read on to understand why it’s gone and what it was.
Summary: quick facts
The “Reports” feature in Ellie will be entirely removed in an upcoming Ellie version, v5.0.
Exporting conceptual models will be done from the model canvas directly - the exact same way as it’s now done with logical models.
The export files themselves will be the exact same .csv files as you got via Reports.
PDF download of the model diagram itself will also be available similarly.
We expect v5.0 to be released mid-2023.
The “Reports” functionality - what it has been used for
Currently, the “Reports” functionality in Ellie is used to export conceptual data models and their contents into .csv files. The way this works now, prior to Ellie v5.0, is that you create a “Report”, into which you choose one or more conceptual models. You can then use the Report UI to export the contents of the included models in three .csv files: entities, relationships, and attributes, each listing the respective elements (and their metadata) contained in the models in the Report. You can also print the Report, getting a .pdf (or a paper version even!).
Over the years, this workflow has been used to integrate Ellie with some outside tools like WhereScape, as well as to distribute models and their metadata elsewhere. However, a few things have changed since the Reports functionality was originally introduced:
Ellie now has API endpoints for application integrations
Our existing WhereScape integration based on the .csv files is being replaced by WhereScape’s own integration utilizing Ellie’s APIs
Sharing models and metadata within the customer organization is more easily done via sharing direct links to Ellie, as our SSO user management options allow organizations to easily share read-access to the whole company
We’ve also identified that the workflow around Reports is a bit cumbersome and non-intuitive overall. So we decided to make it better!
Upcoming changes in Ellie v5.0
In our upcoming major release, v5.0, we will be redoing the underlying technology of our conceptual modeling canvas. Up until now, the conceptual and logical modeling canvases have been different implementations. As we are upgrading this new technology, we are also unifying the conceptual & logical implementations. As a part of this work, we are also enabling exports directly from the canvas for conceptual models - something that has been possible for logical models for quite some time already.
There will be four export options from the canvas in the new version:
Export entities
Export relationships
Export attributes
Export PDF
The first three options will give you the exact same .csv files that have so far been available in the Reports. There will be no changes in the contents of these files - you can get the same csv’s from the canvas as you did earlier via the Reports. The fourth option will offer a downloadable PDF file of the model diagram, so there’s no need to “print as PDF” anymore.
Meanwhile, the Reports functionality itself will be completely removed. This means that all existing Reports that you might have created in your Ellie, and all Reports-related UI elements and functionalities will altogether disappear. URLs pointing to pre-existing Report pages will stop working.
However, it is important to note that as a “Report” was just an “exportable version of a conceptual model”, the models themselves will not be affected in any way. No data whatsoever relating to existing models, entities, relationships, or attributes will be lost.
Please let us know at support@ellie.ai if you have any concerns or questions regarding this!