System Architect provides a measure of redundancy when deleting items from its repository. This safeguard is especially important when working in a team environment, when you often do not want individual users to have the ability to completely remove an item from the repository.
When you use System Architect commands to delete a diagram, symbol, or definition from a project, you are actually marking the items for deletion.
Deleting symbols
To delete symbols, select them, and then press the Delete key.
For most symbol types in System Architect, when you delete a symbol, you are not deleting the symbol’s underlying definition. This definition must be deleted separately.
The exceptions to this behavior are provided by UML Class and Use Case diagrams, and relational data models. If you try to delete certain symbols on UML Class or Use Case diagrams, such as a class or Use Case, System Architect prompts you whether you want to simply delete the symbol from the diagram, or purge the definition from the encyclopedia. This same behavior occurs if you attempt to delete an entity from an ER diagram. Purging the definition in this case is equivalent to deleting the definition.
Deleting definitions
You can delete one definition at a time, or delete multiple definitions in a single move through the Explorer.
You can delete a definition through the item’s definition dialog or through the Explorer.
To delete a definition through the definition dialog
1 Open the definition (double-click a symbol on a diagram, or right-click the symbol and select Edit, or find the definition in the Explorer and open it).
2 Click Delete.
To delete a definition from the Explorer
Find the definition in the Explorer, right‑click it, and select Delete from the drop-down list.
Deleting multiple definitions in one move
1 In the browser, select the definitions.
2 Right‑click, and then click Delete
Deleting all diagrams or definitions of the same type
Do one of these:
▪Selecting the type header in the Explorer, and then press Delete.
▪Right-click the type header, and then click Delete.
If you mass delete a diagram type, corresponding definitions of symbols drawn on those diagrams are not deleted. You must delete each definition type independently.
Recovering free space
After deleting definitions from the encyclopedia, you can recover any free space used by those definitions. This can be done by shrinking the encyclopedia database, either using SQL Server's Enterprise Manager tool, or the SAEM (Enterprise Manager) tool for SQL Express. Instructions on how to shrink a database are provided in the online help of each respective tool. Please note that on a SQL Server network encyclopedia, this should be a staged event that is facilitated by the systems administrator.