Defining business object containing other business object

[osrisd]

Hi,

Does Aware IM allow for a business object definition to include other business objects? eg. Can I define a CustomerAuditTrail business object to be made up of timestamp, user id, action and customer object? Or do I need to explicitly define all the attributes of the Customer object in the CustomerAuditTrail business object?

And if possible, will the Customer business object attributes be available in the CustomerAuditTrail business object form section panel?

Regards

[aware_support]

Does Aware IM allow for a business object definition to include other business objects? eg. Can I define a CustomerAuditTrail business object to be made up of timestamp, user id, action and customer object? Or do I need to explicitly define all the attributes of the Customer object in the CustomerAuditTrail business object?

Oh, yes, Aware IM does allow to include a reference to another object - this is one of Aware IM forte's. This is called a reference attribute and you can read all about them in the User Guide, How To Guide, Quick Tour and other documents. Just define a Customer object first. Then when defining a CustomerAuditTrail object define an attribute called, for example, MyCustomer. When selecting a type for this attribute choose "Customer" from the list (all objects that you have defined up to this point are available for selection as attribute types).

And if possible, will the Customer business object attributes be available in the CustomerAuditTrail business object form section panel?

Yes, it is possible. Morever, this is automatically done by Aware IM - once you define the attribute Aware IM will include it in the form (unless you specifically instruct it not to). There are certain options that you can control to affect how Aware IM will display related instance(s) - for example, which attributes it will show, whether it will allow to edit them etc. All these options are available if you open the attribute for editing and click on the Presentation button.

[osrisd]

Thanks for the clarification.

In relation to the business object form section panel, the customer attributes selected on the Reference Element panel for MyCustomer, do not appear individually on the layout pane in form section panel. Only the MyCustomer object attribute is available in the layout pane. The preview option also does not show the selected customer attributes individually, there is only a single text box for Mycustomer.

Have I missed something during my selection of the customer attributes? Or does it imply that all customer attributes selected will be displayed within the text box for MyCustomer, as per the order specified on the Reference Element panel?

Thanks

[osrisd]

And in relation to first point, the type parameter is no longer available for modification to any other type value on the Attribute panel. It shows the type as Customer,and is greyed out.
Is there some way to change the type defintion for the MyCustomer attribute?

[aware_support]

The attributes are not shown on the layout and they are not shown in the preview but they WILL be shown on the final form in the exact order that you define them in the Presentation dialog. Each attribute will have its own column, they will not be lumped into a single text box. You can publish or test the version and check the resulting form.

Regarding the change to the attribute type. Currently you cannot change the type of the reference attribute - you need to re-create the attribute. This is the limitation of the reference attribute. You can change types of all other attributes.

[osrisd]

In the query panel, individual attributes of the reference object (MyCustomer) can be selected (in the where Attribute/Expression column) to define a query on the business object (Customer Audit Trail). But the individual attributes for the reference object (MyCustomer) are not available in 'Attributes to display' in the Display results pane.

I am aware that by defining a shortcut for the individual attributes of the reference object (MyCustomer) in the business object(Customer Audit Trail), the individual attributes will be available for selection under the 'Attributes to display'. This becomes a tad tedious if all the attributes of the reference object (MyCustomer) need to be included when displaying the business object (Customer Audit Trail).

Is there a more easier/efficient way to get all the attributes of a reference object to be displayed when defining a query on the business object?

[aware_support]

You have to define shortcuts, which is rather quick. It may be a bit tedious if you have lots of shortcuts, but at the moment this is the way to go.