A Small Disaster When Copying an Object

kklosson

Build Number	Database	OS
3529	MySQL	Windows

What I did…

I copied a business object placed in a category directly to another category, meaning I right-clicked on the other category to immediately place it there rather than to the existing category. I then renamed and modified the object.

What I expected to happen

Like other copy/paste operations, I expected the creation of a new object, and I should have noticed that it was not appended with a 1. No name change. Obvious, but I somehow overlooked it. I have no need to modify the original object in my BSV changes.

What happened

The pasted object was simply MOVED to the new category. I’m sure this is the designed behavior but it has caused me considerable grief. I blame myself but would have appreciated being saved from this error.

I went about making sweeping changes to the object and I am in the middle of many changes to the BSV. I now have an existing object that has been radically changed and AwareIM has smartly updated multiple references leaving a slew of integrity errors. First, I can see why the copy/paste operation behaves this way but if I want to change the category, I would do it by changing the object attributes. I view copy/paste as a way to duplicate an object. Maybe that’s just me.

My recommendation is to either apply the normal logic of duplicating the object rather than moving it to the new category (preferred) or offering the choice of actions so the developer is aware of what the system is doing. Again, I should have noted that the object name hadn’t changed as it must to be a duplicate object. But I’ve been using AwareIM for 17 years and still fell into this trap. I think I stepped here once before (with a non-business object) and forgot the peril. So I recommend @aware_support consider an improvement to this behavior.

To move forward, I will have to revert to the CURRENT BSV and copy objects from my work in progress BSV to reproduce my work. Not bad, but whoosh! A major setback.

Attached example BSV
No BSV as this describes the default behavior of the Configuration Tool.
Attached log files
No log files necessary for understanding.

Jaymer

Yep. Done this since v8

kklosson

I will say, my recovery was made easy by AwareIM’s basic features. I created a new version from my last CURRENT version then went about copying and pasting the elements from my damaged version. About 5 days of work was rebuilt in about 3 hours. So kudos on that. I’ll never do that again. And this time, I mean it. This was all on a non-production server.

nhofkes

I fully agree that this should be amended. I have experienced a similar problem in the past - fortunately I noticed this before I made too much changes to the BO. My current approach is to always first create a copy within the same category, and then change the name and category of the copy.

Jaymer

Check this out.
If you edit a report, when you click on a “report element“ and hit the delete key, it gives a confirmation box something like “confirm you want to delete these report elements“.
Of course, you always do, because that’s why you hit the delete key.
Anyway, and working on a V9 report in the last 24 hours, for some reason, even though I had clicked on multiple elements, and I didn’t pay attention to the dialogue box, it actually asked do I want to remove a BO table.
Of course I clicked OK, and then I couldn’t publish because of a shit load of errors.

When you first come in to editing a report, you can drag across multiple controls and hit the delete key and delete them all at once.
But eventually, after a bit of work on the report, it stops doing that. You can select multiple objects and hit the delete key and nothing will happen.
So the only way to delete it is right click clicking on a control and select and delete manually and he had to do that for all of them.
If you think about it when that starts happening, you can just save the report and close it and then when you reopen it, the delete will start working better.

joben

Jaymer Yeah this one is annoying. It should not be possible. There is still a chance however to use CTRL+Z (undo) to get your deleted BOs back. I wish I had known this the first time I made the mistake.

kklosson

Wow, I didn’t think of trying that.

customaware

Had both of these happen in the past…..

Here is another one….

As you publish new versions, the old version becomes Obsolete and the number of Obsolete versions grow over time.
It is recommended to keep the number of Obsolete Versions low.

For small apps, I tend to Upload and Publish new versions via the Browser. But by doing that the number of Obsolete Versions can get away from you over time….

Ok…. Had say, about 20 Obsolete Versions sitting there when I opened the Configurator and decided to start deleting them. You cannot delete more than one at a time. I can understand why this limitation probably exists but would be great to be able to.

So…. was happily Delete Key, Then Ok, Then Arrow up or down and repeat…..

Was going a bit fast and did not carefully check the version number before pressing Enter for OK…..

What I did not realise was that somehow, focus had moved from Versions to the actual Business Space….
So, when I pressed Enter for OK…… Entire Business Space was gone.

Trap for young players. 😝

rocketman

customaware The good news is ….. you only ever do that once.

Jaymer

Yep. I start at the bottom.
Delete, enter, up arrow
Delete, enter, up arrow
Delete, enter, up arrow

It’s fun. Never went all the way to the top.
I always stop 1 short.