Columns

LEXICON User Guide

Database Views Editor : View Detail : Columns

The Columns tab displays the columns definitions for the Database View. A column can be based on a database attribute or expression. Attribute columns are editable in the Database View by the user unless the Readonly property is set. Columns based on expressions are not editable by the user when accessed in the data grid. It may be helpful when managing the columns to drag the Data Source field onto the grouping section in order to quickly see what columns are defined from the different Data Sources.

From the View Detail pane of the Database Views Editor window, select the Columns tab. The columns definitions for the Database View are displayed.

The drop-down list at the top of the Columns tab control contains the all the Data Sources defined in the grid. The functionality of the toolbar which contains the New, Add Standard Attributes and Add Status Column options are affected by which Data Source is selected from drop-down list.


New	Creates a column definition for the selected Data Source and selects it in the grid.
Delete	Deletes the selected column(s).
Add Standard Attributes	Adds all of the common attributes for the elements of the selected data source. Add Standard Attributes is enabled if columns don't already exist for all of the common attributes and the element type for the selected Data Source can be identified.
Add Status Column	Adds a column to display the status for the selected Data Source. The Qualifier must then be set for the column to the status definition to present to the user.

The fields in the grid are enabled/disabled depending on whether the column is based on an attribute or an expression. The field shave the following meaning:


Data Source	The element the attribute or expression is obtained from.
Attribute/Expression	The database attribute or expression used to get the value of the column. PML 2 is not supported.
Column Name	The default display name for the column, if unset then the display name is derived from the attribute or the expression used to get the column value. If duplicate names are entered then the first column will have the requested name, subsequent columns will have an index added (for example: 'Name (2)')
Description	The data type of the column, this is known for the columns based on attributes but must be set for columns based on expressions. If set to the wrong type then errors will be shown when the data is accessed.
Type	The data type of the column, this is known for the columns based on attributes but must be set for the columns based on expressions. If set to the wrong type then errors are shown when the data is accessed.
Read Only	If set the user is not able to modify the values in the column
Expression Syntax	The syntax of the expression if the column is expression based (PML or XPATH)
Qualifier	A qualifier used for attributes that require qualification such as STVVAL.