DSXchange

For easy reading I would like to add annotation to the parallel job.

for example, I would like to help the reader to understand the usage of a transfomer, so I create an annotation panel cover the transformer stage. and input words in it.

After I finish, I found the job looks bad, is there any good design for reference? For easy reading and look beautiful.

I for one would never use an annotation to "cover" any other stage. Not sure what others do but we used them on the canvas somewhat sparingly and more for high level topics regarding the job. For something like what you want to do, 'understand the usage of a transformer', IMHO that should go in the object itself, specifically on the General tab of the Properties, which oddly enough is exactly what that is for.

Granted, it doesn't jump in your face like an annotation does but as a standard, knowing that you could always look there (and we require most objects to be annotated) to see whatever needs to be known about the goings on in the stage is a good thing.

It is nice to have annotation with text that are not crossed by any links or link names. Just move the annotation above or below the stage you want to highlight and resize it as needed. You can play with the justification (top or bottom). We like to increase the default font size a bit too, because the default is becoming harder to read!!

Annotations never cover stages - they always display behind them.

There seem to be two schools of thought: small discreet annotations adjacent to a single stage, or large annotations that run behind a stage or group of stages.

I have personal standards around colour schemes, etc., for annotations for different purposes.

• description annotation
  stage description
  multi-stage annotation
  additional information
  container information
  warning
  SQL annotation

We run large annotations that cover the stage(s) that are referenced in the comment and color code them as well. We try to keep our jobs at 90 degree angle connections as much as possible so its easy to put text above or below the stage(s) without problems.

It shouldnt be too hard to come up with a strategy that is appealing to you and readable. People do things differently but the one thing that makes this hard is having lines going every which way -- unavoidable in a few jobs but for the most part you should probably only have 1-3 outputs per stage and most will only have 1.