A fundamental and powerful element of fSeries is its ability to gather data for use in documents and dashboards. The data can be simple or complex, from a single source or many sources, and accessed in many different formats.

A DSD is a complete definition of everything required to gather a collection of data and prepare it for use in documents, dashboards and many other areas of fSeries.

DSDs are meant to be shared between any number of templates or dashboards. For example, a simple DSD that gathers client demographic details for a client may be used for any number of letters and forms that require the client’s name address and personal details.

More complex DSDs are more likely to have specific uses, such as a merged chronology for a client. But even in this example you may have several templates for different audiences.

Some DSDs will be very simple and set up only to obtain a list of records to offer as select items in a selection page.

On opening fData a list of all DSDs is shown.

The Status column (flag icon) indicates not yet published (red), published but also changes are in progress (amber) and published (green).

The Lock column (padlock icon) indicates whether the item is locked for designing or not. If the padlock is red it is locked by another user; if green, it is locked by you.

A text search option is provided at the top of the page as well as a filter option to narrow down the list to those with you have had an involvement and also search by index label.

Click on an item to view its details and take further actions.

Click the “New DSD” button to begin the process of creating a new DSD