Deleting Assets

You can delete assets directly in an asset collection or you can start a workflow and delete in the working copy of the collection that is managed by the workflow. Irrespective of the choice, delete options are the same. See Starting a Workflow for the information on how to start a workflow.

With asset information displayed on a form, click on Modify button and select Delete.

You can also select Modify>Delete by using a right click in the Classes, Node Shapes and Taxonomy Concepts panels.

For Taxonomy Concepts only, in addition to Delete, there is an option to Delete with descendants. This deletes an entire tree starting with the selected concept.

Since asset collections in EDG can include each other by reference, some care needs to be taken when deleting assets. Delete operation only deletes references to the deleted asset that exist in your current asset collection. Consider the following scenario:

  • Taxonomy 1 defines Concept A

  • Taxonomy 1 also defines Concept B making it a child of Concept A

  • Taxonomy 2 includes Taxonomy 1

  • Taxonomy 2 defines Concept C making it a child of Concept A

  • You go to Taxonomy 1 and delete Concept A. Concept B’s reference to A will be removed, but Concept C’s reference to A will stay. Now concept C has a broader relationship to an undefined concept

Running Problems and Suggestions report on Taxonomy 2 will report the issue and assist you in removing such references.

Similarly, deleting a class (asset type) from an ontology will not remove class instances (assets of a given type) that may be stored in another asset collection. It will make them members of undefined class. Deleting a property does not delete property values that are held in another asset collection.

Running Problems and Suggestion report will help you identify and fix these issues. Further, by going to the Settings>Included By you will see all asset collections that include your selected collection. You can then go to them and use References panel to identify what may be referring to a resource you are planning to delete.