Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Progress Dynamics Basic Development

SmartDataViewer basics

A SmartDataViewer, or viewer, is a Progress frame containing fill-ins and other representations of fields in a single SDO RowObject record. You can also extend it to have buttons, rectangles, and other visual objects. Generally, a viewer displays the currently selected record in an SDO query (which can also be the selected record in a browser linked to that SDO). Its fields are enabled when data entry is permitted. When a user types changes into an existing record, the Save, Reset, and Cancel buttons of the associated toolbar become enabled. On Save, all changes are returned by the SDO to the server for validation. If the user clicks on the Add button in a toolbar, then initial values are displayed in the viewer, and the user can use it to enter other data for the new record. If the user clicks on the Copy button, then the viewer’s initial values match those of the previous record. On Delete, the currently selected record is deleted.

The Object Generator creates a dynamic viewer for each table you select. This viewer has the same field list as the default generated browser. This list can include either all the fields in the SDO (minus object ID fields) or those fields specified in the Entity Maintenance tool.

Note: See Chapter 4, "Preparing to Build Application Objects," for more information.

The viewer has one or two field columns, with tab order specified by the SDO field list or the Display Field list. The Object Generator calculates the layout of the fields. You use the SmartDataField Maintenance tool, described later, to set other properties, including the exact field position, use of dynamic lookups and combos on fields, and set of other visual objects.

A dynamic viewer can also have a custom super procedure, when you need to write 4GL code to specialize the viewer’s behavior. The code in the custom super procedure can respond to both programmatic events in the object (such as initialization) and user interface events.