Task: Reference Data menu — inventory and taxonomy

Table of Contents

This page documents a task in the Clean up application menus story. It captures the goal, current status, acceptance, and any notes or results.

Goal

Two-phase task, second phase gated on sign-off:

  1. Inventory: list every entry currently under the Reference Data menu (menu items, submenus, the plugin/dialog each opens).
  2. Taxonomy proposal: group the inventoried entries into a cohesive structure with a rationale per grouping decision, for review before any =QMenu=/plugin rewiring happens.

Implementation (the actual menu rewiring) only starts after sign-off on the taxonomy.

Status

Field Value
State DONE
Parent story Clean up application menus
Now Nothing.
Waiting on Nothing.
Next Nothing.
Last touched 2026-07-16

Acceptance

Plan

Inventory (current state)

Single owner: RefdataPlugin::setup_menus / RefdataPlugin.cpp:627-989. No other plugin contributes to reference_data_menu.

Flat top-level entries (11, no grouping): Currencies, Countries, Currency Pairs, Books, Portfolios, Business Centres, Calendars, Currency Groups, Parties, Counterparties, Business Units.

Submenus (8, ~35 sub-entries): Trading Conventions (Day Count Fraction Types, Business Day Convention Types, Floating Index Types, Payment Frequencies, Leg Types); Conventions/curve-building (Zero/Deposit/Swap/OIS/FRA/IBOR Index/Overnight Index/Currency Pair/ CDS Conventions); Tenors (Tenors, Tenor Conventions / Tenor Anchors, Kinds, Units, Resolution Algorithms); Classifications (Asset Class Codes, Curve Roles, Instrument Codes); Currency Codes (Monetary Natures, Rounding Types, Currency Market Tiers); Book Codes (Book Statuses, Regulatory Book Types, Book Purpose Types, Ledger Feed Types); Cross Rates Matrix (Topology, Driver Pairs, Enabled Derived Pairs); Organisation Codes, shared with ores.qt.party (Party Types, Contact Types, Party Statuses, Party ID Schemes, Business Unit Types).

Target taxonomy (signed off)

  • Entities — stay flat, one click, unchanged set, reordered into two visually separated clusters (no submenu nesting, so no extra click for traders/middle office): FX & market cluster (Currencies, Currency Pairs, Currency Groups, Countries, Business Centres, Calendars) — divider — org/trading cluster (Books, Portfolios, Parties, Counterparties, Business Units).
  • Conventions — merge today's "Trading Conventions" and "Conventions" submenus into one Conventions submenu with two nested groups, Trading (Day Count/BDC/Floating Index/Payment Frequency/Leg Types) and Curve Building (Zero/Deposit/Swap/OIS/ FRA/IBOR/Overnight/Currency Pair/CDS Conventions). Removes the two-near-identical-names confusion.
  • Tenors — unchanged, already self-contained.
  • Codes (new umbrella submenu) — nest today's four peer submenus (Classifications, Currency Codes, Book Codes, Organisation Codes) as sub-submenus underneath it, since all four are the same kind of thing (auxiliary classification/lookup values) rather than primary entities.
  • Cross Rates Matrix — unchanged, standalone submenu (configuration data, not live market data — see existing code comment).

Net: top-level Reference Data drops from ~19 items to ~15 (11 entities + Conventions + Tenors + Codes + Cross Rates Matrix), and the two real sources of confusion (duplicate "Conventions" naming, four indistinguishable code submenus) are resolved.

Implementation steps

  1. RefdataPlugin::setup_menus — merge Trading Conventions + Conventions into one Conventions submenu with two nested sub-submenus.
  2. Add a Codes submenu; move Classifications, Currency Codes, Book Codes, Organisation Codes under it as sub-submenus (contents unchanged).
  3. Reorder the 11 flat entity actions into the two clusters with a separator between them.
  4. Leave Tenors and Cross Rates Matrix as-is.
  5. Manual QA pass in the running Qt client against the target taxonomy above.

Notes

Test Scenarios

Manual QA scenarios (scaffolded via compass add test_scenario, run through the QA Validation Runner panel) that verify this task. Link new ones here as they're created; the scenario doc itself links back via its "Verifies task" field.

Scenario State Notes
Verify Reference Data menu taxonomy PASSED Retested against the fixed commit (stale plugin artifact removed, services fully warmed up before testing) — all 6 steps PASSED.

PRs

PR Title
#1621 [refdata] Reorganise Reference Data menu into a cohesive taxonomy

Review

# Comment summary File Decision Notes
1 Verification claim didn't match committed scenario record (still FAILED, retest pending) scenario_verify_reference_data_menu_taxonomy.org Accepted Retested against the fixed commit with services fully warmed up; all steps now PASSED, doc updated to match.
2 &Codes mnemonic collides with &Currencies=/=&Counterparties; and within Codes, Book/Currency/Organisation Codes all collide on C RefdataPlugin.cpp, MainWindow.cpp Accepted Codes → Co&des; Book &Codes → &Book Codes; Currency &Codes → Curre&ncy Codes; Organisation &Codes → &Organisation Codes.

Result

Reference Data menu reorganised in RefdataPlugin::setup_menus per the signed-off taxonomy: entities stay flat in FX/market + org/trading clusters; Trading Conventions and Conventions merged into one Conventions submenu with nested Trading/Curve Building groups; new Codes umbrella submenu nests Classifications, Currency Codes, Book Codes, Organisation Codes; Tenors and Cross Rates Matrix unchanged in placement. All Codes/Conventions/Tenors/Cross Rates Matrix submenu entries alphabetised per manual-QA feedback.

Manual QA surfaced a real bug: Business Units and Business Unit Types appeared twice. Root-caused to a stale libores.qt.party.so build artifact left in publish/bin/ from before the party plugin was merged into ores.qt.refdata — no CMake target still builds it, so the plugin loader kept picking up its old menu contributions alongside the current RefdataPlugin. Deleted; nothing regenerates it. The two NATS "no responder" failures in the same QA pass were a startup race (client's first requests landed before ores.refdata.service finished registering all its handlers), not a code defect — confirmed via the service log showing the same subjects succeeding once the service had been running a while.

Review round on PR #1621 found the new Codes submenu's mnemonic collided with &Currencies=/=&Counterparties on Reference Data, and within Codes three of its four children (Book/Currency/Organisation Codes) all used C. Fixed with distinct mnemonics for each. Retested end to end with services fully warmed up before testing (avoiding the earlier startup race): all 6 scenario steps PASSED.

Emacs 29.3 (Org mode 9.6.15)