# Tips and tricks

The following tips and tricks give some helpful ideas for increasing your productivity.

Database connections | When starting a new workbench session, be sure to reconnect to your database (if you are working online). This allows Dali to provide database-related mapping assistance and validation.
Schema-based persistence.xml file | If you are behind a firewall, you may need to configure your Eclipse workspace proxy in the Preferences dialog (Preferences > Internet > Proxy Settings) to properly validate a schema-based `persistence.xml` file.
@XmlPath content assist and validation | Dali supports `@XmlPath` content assist and validation. You can now easily traverse deeply nested XML structures specifying `XmlPath` values.
Making persistent entities | With the Make Persistent dialog, you can easily transform Java classes into persistent entities via Java annotation or entry in an XML mapping file. With multi-select, you can quickly create many entities at once.