Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Progress Dynamics Getting Started

Importing tables as entities into the Repository

The Progress Dynamics Repository stores several levels of data to describe application components. The first level holds descriptions of the tables in your application database, the fields in those tables, and a description of which fields should be used to generate default application components. In this section, you will import that application table information into the Repository.

In this section, you import entities, abstractions of the Repository tables, from the application database into the Repository. From this entity data, framework tools can use the structure of your data, your naming conventions, and other information to automatically generate objects more successfully.

To import and assign data to the ds-Entity Module:

Choose System Entity Import in the Administration window. The Entity Import dialog box appears.
Select dynsports in the Database combo box, if necessary, as shown:



Note that the tables in the DynSports database start with a three-letter acronym (TLA) followed by an underscore. The first two letters identify the organizational structure, such as “AP” for the accounts payable module and “HR” for the human resources module. The third letter indicates the relative volatility of the data, for example, “C” for constant, “M” for master, “T” for transactional, “V” for raw, and “X” for cross-reference/many-to-many relationships. The framework uses its understanding of this naming convention in various ways. For more information on the naming conventions and their uses, see the OpenEdge Development: Progress Dynamics Basic Development .

Choose Select All to select all the table names from the Table Name browse.
Note: For this application, you are only using a few tables in the DynSports database that relate to customer maintenance and order entry. The other tables are not used in the tutorial, but you might want them later to experiment or follow examples in the programming guides.
Set the Prefix Length to 4. The prefix length tells the framework what, if any, standard prefix you use for table names. Setting this field to 4 follows the Progress Dynamics naming convention of a TLA followed by an underscore.
Set the Field Name Separator to an underscore ( _ ). If you specify an underscore or hyphen as the standard separator in field names, the framework automatically replaces the separator with a space while generating labels for the fields or creating descriptions for the table to use in messages.
Select ds-Entity in both Product Module combo boxes.
Leave all the other settings at their defaults. The dialog box should look like this:



Choose the Import button . The Continue import dialog box appears:



Choose Yes. The import process takes a while. After it completes, a message dialog box appears confirming successful completion:



Dialog boxes like this come up during application development. They are examples of how all Progress Dynamics messages are handled. You can define (and translate) application messages in the Repository. When a message is displayed on the client, it comes up in this dialog box with tabs to display:

Message summary.
Message detail.
System information.
AppServer information (if connected to an AppServer).

The message dialog box also contains buttons that let you view a stack trace of the 4GL procedure that generated the message, and send an e-mail message if your PC is correctly configured. The final button alternates the dialog box between full screen and normal modes.

Choose OK, and exit the Entity Import window.