Dragon1 Excel File Structure

Example Excel Files

On this page, we provide two examples of Excel files.

You can download the files here and use them to study and practice generating diagrams.

Upload your edited Excel file (.xlsx) here in the Dragon1 Viewer. Click on the Upload Data file button.

Handling Data from Excel Files

In order to have the Dragon1 software understand the data in your Excel file, we suggest doing the following:

• It is preferred you use the (,) as a separator in fields.

Global Structure

The common global structure of a preformatted Excel Sheet is as follows:

• an Atlas Tab
• a Relationships Tab
• a Processes Tab
• a Data Objects Tab
• an Applications Tab
• a Servers Tab

The processes, data objects, applications and servers tabs are entity class tabs. They hold the data of one specific entity class.

Note: The names of the Tabs are not used by Dragon1. You can give any name to the tabs.

The Atlas Tab is optional and contains often the following entity classes:

• Atlas
• Folder
• Page
• Visualization
• Model
• View

If there is no Atlas Tab, or if there is no atlas, folder, page, visualization or view in the Excel Sheet, Dragon1 will recognize that and generate a placeholder for that.

Mandatory Fields

In order for the Dragon1 software to recognize your data, be sure to include the following column names or data on every Tab:

• id
• class
• name
• descr
• type
• group
• tags

A typical Excel file with process, application and server data would look as follows:

A Excel file in Open Office.

Atlas Tab

The column names for the Atlas Tab are the combined attributes for the classes Atlas, Folder, Page, Visualization, Model and View.

The column names are:

• class, id, modelid, name, title, subtitle, type, team, group1, group2, group3, pagesize, logo, template, layout, actionscript, backgroundimage, fontsize, descr, visualizationid, ref, folderid

Note: Column names are concatenated and do not contain spaces.

Entity Class Tab

Dragon1, out of the box, recognizes about 250 entity classes.

The most used entity classes in the Excel Sheet are:

• architecture, concept, principle, element, pattern, standard, solution, strategy, stakeholder, goal, need, requirement, capability, application, organization, change, capability, project, scenario, document, object, database, server, service, product, mission, vision, firewall, hub, gateway, router, network, cloud

The common list of column names for a Tab with an above-listed entity class are:

• class, id, name, ref, type, tags, image, title, descr, startdate, enddate, directlink, link, weight, owner, administrator

Position, Size, Font and Colors

Most entities have a position, size, font and colors.

You can change these attributes of an entity on its Entity TAB. Or if the entity is shown via a visual item on a visualization, on the Visual Items TAB.

The optional attributes to set or change position, size (resize) and set colors of an entity in the Excel Sheet are:

• x (specify with a number between 0.0 and 10000.0) - Example: 100px or 100
• y (specify with a number between 0.0 and 10000.0) - Example: 100px or 100
• width (specify with a number between 0.0 and 10000.0) - Example: 100px or 100
• height (specify with a number between 0.0 and 100000.0) - Example: 100px or 100
• fill, fill means the SVG inside color of a shape (specify with a color name or HEX code) - Example: white or #FFFFFF
• stroke, stroke means the SVG line color of a shape (specify with a color name or HEX code) - Example: white or #FFFFFF
• strokewidth, mean the width of the linecolor (specify with a number between 0.0 and 10000.0) - Example: 5px or 5
• color - Example: darkblue or #00ff12
• fontfamily - Example: Arial or Verdana
• fontsize - Example: 32px or 32

Note: Use of px (short for pixel) is optional.

Entities with Visual Items

If an entity is shown on a visualization via a visual item, you can change the x, y, width, height, fill, stroke and strokewidth attributes there.

If the visual item of an entity has no attributes specified, the original attributes of the entity will be reused.

Relationships Tab

The relationships tab holds the connection information between entities.

The relationships tab has the following column names:

• class, id, modelid, name, sourceclass, sourceid, targetclass, targetid, type, relationshiptext

Uploading a Excel in the Viewer

You can upload Excel files (.xlsx) directly into the Dragon1 Viewer.

If you upload a .xlsx file in the Viewer, compliant to the specification above, it will be converted internally into a .dragon1 file (JSON structured), like below:

Next, a diagram in the Viewer will be shown below:

A Dragon1 Excel file in the Viewer.

Data Checking

On uploading, the Viewer will check your file for the following:

• Do all the tabs have the mandatory fields
• Do the tabs have common optional fields
• Do the columns contain expected data
• Does the id column not contain class name
• Does the class column contain known class name
• Does the name column contain values
• Are there no duplicate or missing id's. Are the ids unique?
• Do all pages have visualizations?
• Do all visualizations have correct template names and layout strings?

If a rule is breached, then the Viewer will notify the user.

Users can either choose to have Dragon1 fix it or to fix it themselves.