Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Progress Dynamics Advanced Development

Properties typically used in action rules

You can use any property or function you want in an action rule, but there are a handful that are most likely to be useful. These are all used in existing action rules in the Navigation, TableIO, and Commit categories. Here are some useful properties:

QueryPosition — This SDO property identifies where in the dataset the cursor is positioned. It is generally used to identify which navigation items to enable. Its possible values are:
FirstRecord — The first record.
LastRecord — The last record.
OnlyRecord — There is only one record in the dataset.
NotFirstOrLast — The cursor is somewhere in the middle of the dataset.
NoRecordAvailable — The dataset is empty.
RowObjectState — This SDO property identifies whether a modified record has been saved on the client without being returned to the server. This would normally be true only if there is a Commit-Source (such as toolbar with a band of Commit and Undo buttons) in the window that causes updates to be cached on the client until a Commit event happens. So the Commit and Undo buttons use these two values to determine whether they should be enabled or not:
NoUpdates — No updates have been saved without being committed (so Commit and Undo buttons should be disabled, for example).
RowUpdated — At least one record has been saved without being committed (so Commit and Update buttons should be enabled).
RecordState — This property, defined for data visualization SmartObjects, indicates whether there is a record available to display or update. Its possible values are:
RecordAvailable — There is a record available for display or update.
NoRecordAvailable — There is no record available for display or update. This normally means that the dataset of the associated SDO is empty. This could be the case, for example, when the user is adding OrderLine records for an Order and the first OrderLine has not yet been added. In this state, the application can allow an Add operation but not an Update or Delete.
NoRecordAvailableExt — This special value indicates that not only is there no record available in the current dataset, but there is no record available in the parent dataset either (The ext suffix means extended). This is useful information because it signals to an update band that it is not appropriate to enable even an Add operation. For example, if the current SDO is an OrderLine SDO, and is a child of an Order SDO, and there is no currently selected Order (perhaps because the current Customer in the SDO yet another level above has no orders), then it is not appropriate to allow the user to add an OrderLine because there is no Order key to assign to it. This is why the action rule for the Add button is this:

RecordState=RecordAvailable,NoRecordAvailable and Editable and DataModified=no and CanNavigate()

At first it might not seem sensible to check that the RecordState is either RecordAvailable or NoRecordAvailable, but it is for exactly this reason that this is the case. The one remaining condition is that the RecordState is NoRecordAvailableExt, and in this case the Add button is not enabled.

Editable — This LOGICAL property is defined for data visualization SmartObjects, and it is TRUE if the current target SmartObject is editable, that is, can be used for an Add, Copy, Update, or Delete. This is normally the case if the object has any enabled fields, or if it is a GroupAssign-Source for some other object that has enabled fields.
DataModified — This LOGICAL property is defined for SDOs, and it is TRUE if the current record in the dataset has been modified but not saved. As soon as a user begins to type into an enabled field in a viewer or an enabled cell in a browser, a trigger sets this property to TRUE and notifies the toolbar that is its TableIO-Source. The result is that the Save and Cancel buttons are immediately enabled.
NewRecord — This property is defined for data visualization SmartObjects. It indicates whether the currently displayed record is a newly created record, that is, one that has not yet been saved back to the database. It is a CHARACTER property rather than a LOGICAL property because it can have three possible values:
No — For an existing record.
Add — For a new record created by an Add operation.
Copy — For a record newly created by a Copy operation.
ObjectMode — This data visualization property is new to the ADM2 with Progress Dynamics. It is used by some of the toolbar types that contain View and Modify buttons that alternate the enabled state of the object, as well as a Save button to actually save changes. Its three possible values are:
Modify — The object is in Modify mode, with fields enabled but no changes underway.
View — The object is in View mode, with fields disabled.
Update — The object is in Save mode, with fields enabled and changes in process, so that the Save button is also enabled to save the changes.
FilterActive — This LOGICAL property is TRUE if there is currently a filter applied to the SDO that is being browsed. This is used, for example, in the alternate image rule for the Filter button itself, to display the image with the check mark. You might also use it to determine whether all data for a table is being retrieved or only a filtered subset of the data.