OpenEdge Development:<br />Progress Dynamics Basic Development Entity maintenance

Once you have imported default data into the entity tables from the database schema, you can customize that data for each table in your database as needed. You might want to do this to change the list of fields to be placed into the dynamic browser and viewer that you can generate automatically, for example, so that not all fields are displayed for a large table, or so that fields containing large amounts of data needing special display formats are not put into these default visual objects. In addition, you can modify any of the defaults assigned for the Key Field, Object Field, and other entity values where the Import utility cannot make the correct decisions for your database.

From the Administration window, select System

Entity Control.

The Entity Control window displays a list of all the tables known to the Repository, including the tables in the Repository database itself.

If you want to filter Repository tables out, follow these steps:

Choose Filter. The Filter window appears, as shown:

Enter the name of your application database under Entity Dbname.

Select Permanent so that this filter is saved permanently for you in the Repository.

Choose OK.

Note: In this case, a warning message appears because your filter is on a nonindexed field. This is probably alright because the total number of records in the Entity table (one for each database table) will not be huge. This is an example of using the Filter that is a standard part of every browse window in the framework tools. It is also an example of how user preferences such as filters, window positions and sizes, etc., are saved in the Repository for each user. See Chapter 8, "Using the Progress Dynamics Container Builder," for examples of some of the standard Progress Dynamics toolbars that have buttons supporting functions such as this.

Now the Entity Control shows only the tables in your database, as shown:

(Note that the Filter button in the bottom toolbar now has a check mark in it, to remind you that you applied a filter.)

Select an entry in the browser and either double-click on it or select Update. The Entity Maintenance window appears. Use this window to change settings for individual tables, and assign the display list for each table where the default is not appropriate, as shown:

Many of the fields in the Entity maintenance window are the same as those in the Entity Import utility. Here you can check to see what values the Import utility has assigned, modify them if they are not appropriate, or fill them in if the Import utility did nothing at all with the field. The following sections describe the use of some of the fields not already discussed.