Information Requirement Diagram

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What is Information Requirement Diagram (IRD)?

The Information Requirement Diagram (IRD) is a model used to define a graph in order to process data using data operations, business knowledge, and rules. It produces appropriate output to meet the data requirements of a specific business process or logic. An IRD is built by combining different nodes that are related to each other. Each node may have specific types of associations with other nodes of the graph.

An IDR sample is shown below:

In execution time, the IRD uses monadic operators underneath.

Elements

All of the different types of nodes on an IRD model is illustrated below.

Node Type	Notation	Description
Operator		The act of applying an operator on a source of data which would create/generate a new set of data as a source to the other nodes of the graph (e.g., select, filter, etc.)
Input Data		data used as an input by one or more monadic operators.
Output Data		Denotes the output of the IRD model at any stage.
Information		Denotes the relationship between nodes that pass a source as an input information to a destination node. Information is the source of the next monadic operator.
Knowledge		Denotes the relationship between nodes that pass a source as the processing parameters of a destination node.
Dependency		Showing the knowledge source of an element or the dependency of a knowledge source on input data

Operators

Operators help to manipulate data and they can be selected from the IRD Toolbox.

Associations

Associations in the graph are responsible for passing on information to a destination node as the source. The source of information is provided to an operator (node) in two different roles:

• Information
• Knowledge

The next node in the graph receives the information as an information source or passes parameters (knowledge). In the above picture, the Intersect g1, g2 will have two inputs to the entire intersect operator:

1. one from the top green Select, which will act as the information source
2. the other one from the bottom green Select, which will act as parameters

When passing information around in the graph, the receiver node may need:

1. Exactly the result of the previous operator
2. The result of the previous operator plus its association

In the first scenario, based on the role of the association (Information or Knowledge), the source will be passed to the next operator as a piece of input information or processing parameters without any changes. If some changes are required while transferring a source to the next operator, the expression property of association can be used. In this case, the receiver will get the information on which the association’s expression was applied.

In the above example, the purple group node does not pass the source as information directly to the next node (green select) because the association between these would apply a function (expression) on the information source before the next node (green select) receives it.

To add a new Decision Requirement Diagram document,

Document Types --> Business Logic --> Decision Requirement Diagram

Once you add a document, this will be the window.

IRD Properties

1. Name: Name of the IRD
2. Glossaries: Link Business Glossaries and Boxed Expressions

Toolbox

The toolbox has the following items.

Top Menu

At the top menu, you can see the following items.

1. Open the related logic document for this node: Open the logic document of a selected node
2. Create a logic document for selected node: Create a logic document for a selected node
3. Delete item: Delete a selected item
4. Highlight the impacts of the selected node: Highlight the impacts of a selected node
5. Properties: Properties of the page or a node
6. Compile to execution plan: Shows the XML version of the diagram
7. Business Glossary: Link Business glossaries and boxed expressions
8. Overview of entire model: See the entire model
9. Zooming: Zoom in or zoom out
10. Export to image: Export the document to an image
11. Alignments: Align nodes
12. Resize: Resize selected nodes to a single size
13. Layout arrangements: Automatically arrange and layout the nodes
14. Change connections: Change connection styles to straight/ Bezier or Right Angle

Node/ Connection Properties

If you click on a node/ connection, its property window will appear. The properties vary depending on the node type.

Video Description

Sample IRD

Download the sample IRD (Sample-IRD.zip) using the attachment.