I have played a bit with the properties options for a column in the DataProvider editor (v4.1.1), and noticed that you could set a human readable title that is indeed used when exporting. Great!
Except that in the export wizard, when you select columns, it doesn’t show the Title in the “export to file” column. Instead it uses the field name, which will be very confusing to end users:
[attachment=0]Export.gif[/attachment]
Also, I don’t see any possibilities to use i18n keys into that title, which would be extremely useful.
There is also the “Excluded” checkbox… that’s great if you don’t want your end-users to see some fields, so I tried using that to hide all the foreign keys on a table… oops, bad idea, when I do that, all the relations based on these field are dead. I would have think that the field would be excluded to end users, not to Servoy itself!
Then I am also puzzled about the “Foreign type” property option: what good does it do? If I was automatically assigning relations based on it, I would understand, but it doesn’t do anything, whether I set something or not I can’t see any change of behavior anywhere. And what about the “Suggest…” button that suggests nothing that makes sense?
I have searched in the docs to find a clue as to what this feature is supposed to do, but apart from telling me how to click an choose the foreign type from a drop-down list (thank you very much, I would have guessed), nothing much.
Anyone at Sevoy would care to comment on theses features?
ptalbot:
Anyone at Sevoy would care to comment on theses features?
Apparently no one.
Am I really the only one who cares to know about these undocumented features?
Hi,
Tnx for your effort reporting these items.
As for the Title not used in the “export to file” column: Could you create a case for that in our support system? (http://www.servoy.com/s)
As far as I know, you can use i18n keys for the title property of columns, using the notation ‘i18n:my.key.here’. Doesn’t that work for you?
The excluded property on columns means they are completely not taken into account in Servoy. In every query Servoy generated on that table, they are excluded. So, you shouldn’t exclude columns that you need.
The foreign type property allows you to specify on a column that contains an FK from which table that FK comes from. When you have don this consistently throughout your datamodel, you can then use the function databaseManager.mergeRecords to merge 2 records for a table. Servoy will then automatically update all records in every other table where the PK of the deleted record is used as an FK.
Hope this helps. Will address this to the team talking care of the documentation as well, so in will be part of the next revision of the documentation.
Regards,
Paul
pbakker:
As for the Title not used in the “export to file” column: Could you create a case for that in our support system? (http://www.servoy.com/s)
I will, thanks.
pbakker:
As far as I know, you can use i18n keys for the title property of columns, using the notation ‘i18n:my.key.here’. Doesn’t that work for you?
Indeed it works. That’s great! (and it should be part of the doc).
pbakker:
The excluded property on columns means they are completely not taken into account in Servoy. In every query Servoy generated on that table, they are excluded. So, you shouldn’t exclude columns that you need.
I understand, but then how do you mask foreign keys in the export wizard for example?
I think there should be an option here… You don’t want end-users to be confronted with these, most of the time.
pbakker:
The foreign type property allows you to specify on a column that contains an FK from which table that FK comes from. When you have don this consistently throughout your datamodel, you can then use the function databaseManager.mergeRecords to merge 2 records for a table. Servoy will then automatically update all records in every other table where the PK of the deleted record is used as an FK.
OK, I will give it a try. Are there any other methods that make use of this that we should be aware of?
pbakker:
Hope this helps. Will address this to the team talking care of the documentation as well, so in will be part of the next revision of the documentation.
Please do. The documentation is really a mess, and sometimes more misleading than helping :{
It’s not up to the high standard of your product, and I really think it’s a shame, especially when you think of some Open Source products which are more documented than Servoy…
You don’t always have the time to search the forum or the patience to wait for an answer from other users for something that should be at your disposal when you buy the product.
No offense, I like the product, I like the forum and the passionate people here who tries to deal with the “hidden” features their own way, but you really need to work on these docs!
Thanks anyway for your answer,
Patrick Talbot
Hi Patrick,
The docs have our attention.
I understand, but then how do you mask foreign keys in the export wizard for example?
I think there should be an option here… You don’t want end-users to be confronted with these, most of the time.
There is no option for this. The default import/export functionality is straight forward is what it does and how it does it. If you want more advanced things, most people choose to roll their own mechanism.
OK, I will give it a try. Are there any other methods that make use of this that we should be aware of?
No
Regards,
Paul
