Configuration

settings The Configuration screen is where you manage settings that apply to your whole project. Reach it from the gear icon in the top header bar. While the main screens are about authoring metadata, Configuration is about how the project itself is set up and how the app behaves while you work in it.

What you can do here

The screen has two sections in the left rail — Project Configuration and Settings.

Storage folders

The first stop is the folder layout for your project. ADL stores each type of metadata in its own subfolder, and this is where you see and edit those paths:

Configurations, Project Settings, Conventions, Classifications, Connections, Data Objects, Data Object Mappings, Templates, Output.

Folder paths are set when you first create a project (through the Get Started wizard). Once a repository is connected, the paths are locked — to change them you disconnect from the repository, edit the paths, and reconnect. This keeps file references consistent across the project.

Naming conventions

Pick the naming convention that’s applied when ADL generates names automatically:

Convention key naming — How keys in your conventions file are matched and produced.
File name and file extension conventions — Casing for generated file names.
Folder name convention — Casing for any folders ADL creates.

These tie into the Conventions you’ve defined for the project — this page chooses which convention style ADL applies when it has to mint a new name.

App behavior

Switch on or off the small behaviors that keep your metadata files tidy:

Sort attribute lists / classifications list / conventions list — Choose how lists are ordered when JSON files are written (Ordinal, Ordinal Ignore Case, Current Culture Ignore Case, or None).
Autogenerate file names by convention — When you create a new metadata object, let ADL derive the file name from the naming convention.
Autogenerate folder names by convention — Same idea for folders.

Editor preferences (project)

Set project-level defaults for the in-app code editor — tab size, whether tabs insert spaces, whether to detect indentation, trim whitespace, and the auto-indent strategy. These defaults apply to anyone opening the project; individuals can still override them in their personal Profile.

Relationship rules

Define how relationships look on the Graph. Each rule maps a source classification → target classification pair to:

Relationship type (e.g. “Foreign Key”, “realizes”, “specializes”).
Cardinality (0..1, 1..1, 0.., 1.., or “Not Applicable”).
Edge styling — colour, dashed/solid line, end marker (auto / UML realization / none).
Column-based — When set, edges connect at the column level; otherwise the relationship is treated as object-level only.
Show type as «label» — Toggle UML-style stereotype labels on the edge.

Rules are evaluated most-specific-first, so a rule for a particular classification pair wins over a fallback rule that leaves the source/target empty. If nothing matches, the relationship is still created — just without a type or cardinality.

Relationship rules are shared across all personas in the project.

Tips

Set folder layout once, up front. It’s much easier to choose paths before populating the project than to migrate later.
Use relationship rules sparingly. A handful of well-chosen rules covers most diagrams. Start with the broad cases and add specifics only where the defaults don’t communicate intent.
Project vs. personal preferences. Editor preferences set here are the project default; the same settings on your Profile override them for you only.

Conventions — Define the naming patterns this page chooses between
Graph — See relationship rules in action
Profile — Your personal preferences, which can override project defaults
Personas — Project-wide rules that interact with the active persona