Unsure about the PROTECT Action

tazzmaxx · Post by **tazzmaxx** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 4:22 pm

How do you "UN" PROTECT the PROTECT Action?

I read through the guide and read the forums but I can't find anything on the removal of the PROTECT action. I'm sure that this is easy and I am just missing it.

Is it as simple as adding NOT PROTECT?

Thanks for your help!

aware_support · Post by **aware_support** » Thu Mar 12, 2009 10:44 pm

The way to "unprotect" is not to protect in the first place. You need to either remove a PROTECT rule or change its condition.

tazzmaxx · Post by **tazzmaxx** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 5:06 am

I'm sorry if this comes out harsh but what is point of having a PROTECT action without having the ability to reverse it? Isn't it possible that a record could become protected and then a user changes their mind (I know...that never happens).

Maybe I am not understanding the use of the PROTECT action...my assumption is that once a record reaches a desired status that a PROTECT action could be used to protect the record from being changed by a user or All users. If a change would then need to be made it would have to be modified (forever I am assuming) by an administrator (unless PROTECT FROM ALL was used...then nobody could modify the record).

I want to understand but your documentation can be confusing and the searching on the forum is really difficult.

aware_support · Post by **aware_support** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 6:58 am

I think you are misunderstanding the concept of protection. The user does not protect or unprotect anything - the system does all the protection and unprotection behind the scenes depending on the run-time conditions. So it is your responsibility as a configurator to provide protection rules according to the requirements of your system.

You have to provide conditions under which protection will happen. Consequently the reverse of these conditions is when the protection won't happen and so records will be "unprotected". For example, you can define a rule that looks like this:

If Transaction.Status = 'Completed' Then
PROTECT Transaction.Balance FROM ALL

Whenever a status of the transaction becomes "completed", the balance attribute becomes read-only (protected). It is unprotected if the status is anything else.

tazzmaxx · Post by **tazzmaxx** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 1:10 pm

Hi Aware,

You have explained what did not make sense in your documentation wih the preceeding example.

It is unprotected if the status is anything else.

Thank you for explaining how to 'unprotect' which was my original question.

TM