Have you ever spent hours working on a model? Perfecting each join, meticulously defining the cardinality of each individual join, fastidiously testing the queries each step of the way, only to have Framework crash on you?

In this screenshot, I’ve spent entire MINUTES building the joins.

Now, because I’m a hotshot developer I know I can get away with not having Auto Save (Project –> Options –> Auto Save) turned on.  I live on the edge, so I also turn off the rows restriction when testing my queries.

Now here I go, testing my joins when suddenly… Disaster!

I’ve killed Framework! (After setting up a Cartesian join between two fact tables, and disabling the rows restriction and randomly clicking until Windows thought the process wasn’t responding.) And now, with dread in my heart, I open the model already knowing what I’ll see.

But there’s some hope! Looking at the folder, there’s an XML file there called “session-log-backup.xml”

Saved!

Under the projects menu there’s a Run Script option.

Clicking that opens a file browser. Let’s select that session-log-backup…

It recorded every action performed on the model. What happens if we run it?

And clicking on accept…

Almost perfect, it recreated all of the joins (including the crazy Cartesian) and the packages. But it didn’t remember that I like the layout as Star, not as Standard. Now instead of spending hours of my life recreating my work, It’ll take me entire SECONDS to get the diagram back as a star.

I’m still not using Auto Save though.