Phil's review notes for Neil's "Green Book Functionality" High Level Design
Edit: 5-7-2009

Re: /projects/riverware/doc/accounting/GreenBook/GreenBookDesign.pdf
Also: /projects/riverware/doc/accounting/GreenBook/GreenBookReq2009.pdf

These observations and suggestions are offered as things to consider. I didn't see anything that was actually a problem.

General observations

1. I was originally, mistakenly under the impression that the Green Book functionality would be available both in the GUI and as a Report. But I now understand that only Report Document Generation is required. For example, in considering use of the SCT, it wasn't clear to me that the SCT would be used for its capabilities other than series value display (e.g. composing the set of slots for the report and defining a time aggregation specification). There is no intention (with the SCT option) to significantly enhance the SCT's GUI display to support specific new data display provisions required for the generated report document, other than those required for the new Annotations design.

Note Group Manager Dialog: Panel Lists

This comment is in reference to the effective "cascading" of selections and list enumeration among the three hierarchical panels:

1. Note Groups panel
2. Notes panel
3. Slots panel

The current specification has the Notes panel list and the Slots panel list be populated only if there is exactly one selected item in the "superior" panel. I recommend that we allow multiple item selections to populate the "inferior" panel with the child items of the full multiple selection AND show the name of the parent item in the inferior panels. In other words:

The Notes panel list would have these two columns:

1. Notes
2. Note Group ... <<< ADDED

and the Slots panel would have these three columns:

1. Slot
2. Timestep
3. Note ... <<< ADDED

Allowing the lower two panel lists to be populated using multiple selections in the superior panel, and adding the indicated columns -- in conjunction with sorting features in the various lists (by clicking on a list column header) -- provides a way for the user to see all the notes on a specific Slot or at a specific Timestep.

Slots in the Slot List should include the Slot Type icon. Notes and Note Groups in all three lists (where they appear) should have the Note Group icon (with the color specific the Note Group).

Note Group Manager Dialog: In-dialog editing

I prefer that we not use separate small popup dialogs for editing and creation operations. I sketched out a dialog design (on paper) which supports the use of buttons and line entry widgets to support the creation and editing Note Groups and Groups (for the first two panels). Something like this:

  ====================================

  +------------------------------------------------------------+
  |                                                            |
  |   Note Group List                                          |
  |                                                            |
  +------------------------------------------------------------+

  [icon combo] [----------- text line edit widget -------------]
  [button: "Add"]  [button: "Change"]  [button: Delete Selected]  

  ====================================

• The [icon combo] widget exists only in the Note Group panel, not the Note panel.
• Clicking on a list item puts its name (or text, in the case of Notes) in the text line edit widget, and selects that item's icon in the icon combo.
• The Add button is enabled only if the text in the text line edit widget differs from all the existing items, and if that text is not blank. In the case of the Notes panel, the Add button will also be disabled if more than one Note Group is selected.
• The Change button is enabled only if exactly one item is selected in the list and if the text line edit text differs from the selected item's text.
• The Delete Selected button is enabled only if at least one item is selected in the list. The deletion operation is confirmed with a dialog box stating at least the number of items which would be deleted.

Note Group Manager Dialog: Panel Arrangement

We could consider putting the first two panels side-by-side instead of vertically arranged. The thing is, the Slot panel needs a lot of horizontal space for long slot names (plus Timestep and Note columns). Also, it would be good if there would be enough vertical space in the Slot panel for as many as 15 or more slot items to be simultaneously visible. The top two panels don't need nearly as much horizontal space as the Slot panel, and it would probably be reasonable to put them side-by-side.

Slot and Timestep SelectionPopup

This dialog could show also:

• the note text for the note slot/timestep association being created.
• the resulting number of timesteps (i.e. between and including the start timestep and the end timestep).

Series Table Report Configuration Dialog

I would prefer a tabbed layout. Once a report is set up, users will be working mostly with the Slot List and the Time Range settings, and the other configuration information takes up a lot of real estate. Any settings relevant across different tabs could be repeated as a non-editable label in other dependent tab (e.g. the Aggregation Configuration selection in the slot tab) -- I don't see a lot of other examples of such dependencies.

We could support multiple distinct summary rows in the report, e.g. Sum, Ave, Min, Max. In the slot list, instead of showing a single Aggregation Method selection, we could have distinct checkboxes, e.g.:

    [x] Sum  [x] Ave  [x] Min  [x] Max

Operations to clear or set all the checkboxes for one of these summary algorithms on many selected slot items could be implemented in a context menu (when right-clicking within a multiple slot item selection).

Delirious technical detail: It is significant that all the series values required by Reclamation/Albuquerque to replicate the current Green Book are flows represented as volumes. For general applicability, we wouldn't (and aren't) making that assumption. This is significant when computing sums of values within a time series. Doing so is not valid within time series of static volumes. It's important that users can disable the display of sums for such series slots, which the current design does provide (via the independent configuration of Aggregate Methods for each Slot). But it would be a problem if we decided to provide the Aggregate Method only once for the whole report (which seems reasonable, except for the consideration of static volumes).

SCT support, even if we don't use SCTs to manage Green Book Report Configurations

We already support the ad-hoc creation of an SCT for all of the Slots on a Simultion Object (from the Open Object dialog) -- and from other slot contexts. It would be a very simple matter to add that capability to the Output Device manager and/or the Output Device editor ... i.e. to show all of an "output device's" slots within a new SCT. This would effectivley provide a quick "preview" for the generated Green Book report (of course limited to the display capabilities of the SCT).

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