Preferences

Preferences are accessed through the Edit → Preferences menu of an overview or a sketch that is open for editing. (Note: on Mac OS X, the Preferences option is in the standard location in the main application menu, rather than the Edit menu).

General

General preferences control the main Easik settings.

General preferences tab.

Path

The path setting defines the default system folder Easik uses when opening or saving files. You can set this to be the last folder a file was opened or saved from ("Last used folder"), the folder Easik was started from ("Running directory"), or a specific folder.

The default setting is the last used folder.

Show attributes & unique keys

This option controls whether or not attributes and unique keys are displayed in new sketches. The default option is enabled. This can be controlled for a sketch which is open for editing from the sketch window's Edit menu.

The default setting is the last used folder.

Thumbnail scale

This option controls the size of sketch and view thumbnails displayed in the overview. A setting of 0.25 means that the thumbnail of sketches and views will be ¼ of their actual size; 0.5 would indicate ½ of the actual size.

The default setting is 0.25 (¼ size).

Colours

Colour settings control the look and feel of Easik sketches, views, and the main overview window.

Colour preferences tab.

The colours tab allows you to adjust the colours and, in some cases, line widths, used within Easik for displaying sketches, overviews, and views. To change a colour, click the Edit button beside the colour you wish to change. To change a line or border width, drag the slider beside the colour to select the desired width.

SQL Defaults

The SQL Defaults settings allow you to control the default settings to be used when connecting to a database, to manipulate an existing set of tables, or export a sketch to a database.

SQL Defaults preferences tab.

Default SQL driver

This setting controls the default SQL driver used when connecting and exporting. Currently, MySQL and PostgreSQL database connections are supported.

Primary key column names

This setting controls how the primary key column will be named when exporting a sketch to an SQL server or an SQL file.

The default, "id", uses the name "id" for the primary key of all tables. Alternatively, "<tablename>_id" can be used to base the primary key column on the table name: for example, the primary key of the entity "Car" would be "Car_id". You can also use a custom name; <table> in this custom field will be replaced with the table name.

Foreign key column names

This setting controls how foreign keys will be named when exporting a sketch to an SQL server or SQL file.

The default, "Use edge labels", will use the label specified for an edge name in a sketch as the foreign key column. Alternatively, you may use the target table name followed by the edge label, target table name alone, and target table name followed by _id name "id" as the foreign key columns. Note that using a foreign key that does not contain the edge label will not work if there are parallel edges between entities. You may also specify a custom naming scheme: <source> will be replaced with the source entity name; <target> with the target entity name; and <edge> with the edge label.

Identifier quoting

This sets the default enabling of identifier quoting.

Edge cascading

This setting allows you to set the default cascading mode for foreign keys (edges). Note that you can also specify this for each edge within a sketch: this setting controls only the default cascading mode.

The two options here are cascading, and restricted. Cascading deletions means that when deleting a row, any referenced rows will also be deleted (subject to any foreign keys of the referencing rows). Restricted disallows any deletion while a row is still referenced.

The default Easik setting is cascading deletions.

Partial edge cascading

This setting allows you to set the default cascading mode for partial edges (in SQL, these are nullable foreign keys). In addition to the two options available for edge cascading, you may also specify "Set null": this option sets any referring foreign key values to NULL when deleting a row.

The "Set null" option is the default for partial edges.