Projects

Types of Data Shaper Projects

There can be Data Shaper Local projects or Data Shaper Server projects.

Data Shaper (Local) Project

A Data Shaper Project is a project whose entire structure resides only on your local computer. All data and graphs reside locally in a project in a workspace, graphs runs locally with Data Shaper Runtime.

Local projects can be easily versioned with a version system of your choice (Git, Mercurial, SVN, Bazaar, CVS, etc.).

Data Shaper Server Project

A Data Shaper Server Project is a project with a Data Shaper Server sandbox. The entire project structure resides on the Data Shaper Server so files are on the server and on your local computer.

When you save a file locally, Data Shaper Designer synchronizes its content with Data Shaper Server. When a file is created on the server, the file content is automatically downloaded and you can see it in Data Shaper Designer.

You can choose files that will not be synchronized on the server. These files are chosen according to their file name. For example, you can avoid downloading the data-tmp directory. See Ignored Files.

You can also avoid downloading files above a specific size limit using placeholder files.

Placeholder Files

A placeholder file is a dummy file in Data Shaper Designer. It is a file exceeding a user-defined size limit.

The placeholder file can be viewed in Project Explorer but it cannot be modified within Eclipse. The file content only exists on the Data Shaper Server. When you open the placeholder file, you can view its lines in a special editor.

Placeholder files save disk space because you only download files up to a specific size. The files exceeding that limit are displayed in Project Explorer but its content is only on the Server. You can download the content of the placeholder file from Data Shaper Server explicitly. The file size limit can be set in Data Shaper Server Integration.

As you copy, move, rename, or delete the placeholder file, the corresponding file on the Data Shaper Server is copied, moved, renamed, or deleted.

Placeholder vs. placeholder file We use two similar terms in our documentation: placeholders and placeholder files. Placeholder is a replaceable part of a text - variable. It is used within configuration, mostly in the Data Shaper Server documentation. A placeholder file is a mock-up of a data file. You can view the placeholder file in Project Explorer in Designer, but the file content is only on the Server.

Graph Run

The graphs run on the Data Shaper Server, therefore you need a working connection to the Server to run graphs.

Versioning

As the project files are available on your computer, the projects can be versioned with your preferred versioning system, e.g. SVN or Git. See Versioning of Server Project Content.