Rational Programming Patterns

How to create a User Entity description

In this tab, you complete the fields of the User Entity whose structure is defined in the Meta Entity it is related to.

About this task

There are several possibilities to complete the fields of the User Entity, you can either add all fields in a Data Element description or add a field one by one, or enter required fields only with a cardinality '1-1'.

Procedure

  1. Open the Description tab of a User Entity. To do so, select a User Entity in the Design Explorer view and double-click, or right-click and select Open. Then access its Description tab from the Overview tab or directly by clicking the Description tab.
  2. When you open a new User Entity, the structure table is empty. If you click Add all Fields, the structure defined in the Meta Entity is duplicated here. So you find the root Data Aggregate at the top level of a tree structure, and the other Data Aggregates at lower levels with all their Data Element descriptions.
  3. The other possibility is to add a field one by one as follows:
    1. Click Add Field to have the root Data Aggregate displayed.
    2. Click Add Field again. It opens a selection box in which you can select the child Data Element Aggregate of your choice.
    3. Click Add value. Then click either Add all Fields to have all the fields defined in the Meta Entity for this Data Aggregate description, or click Add Field to select one field in the open selection box. If you have mandatory fields defined in your Meta Entity, click Add Required Fields to have them displayed in your Data Element Aggregate, otherwise, an error is notified. You can duplicate a Data Aggregate and the fields it contains by using Copy and Paste in the menu.
  4. Then, you must enter values in the field which fits the description made in the Meta Entity, otherwise, it can create errors. To do so, click the field and then in the value column and enter a value.
    • Lines containing fields identified as unique, sort, or identifier fields, or with a type string, byte or reference in the Meta Entity, have a button which is displayed when you click their value column cell. It is used to enter a series of values or to select an entity for a field identified as a reference. Two other buttons are displayed on the reference field lines. Click the first one to export the field to a file in your browser, or click the second one to import a file from the browser to the field.
    • For a Data Aggregate, the column value automatically shows the mandatory fields and their values.
    • If you want to display a selection of fields in the User Entity content, enter their names followed by a space in Field Path Filter. Check Show field name to have the labels and names of the fields displayed in the User Entity.
  5. A table shows up in the Description detail section for each Data Aggregate Description containing multiple values. Simple fields only are displayed (integer, decimal, date, string, float, byte, timestamp, reference with a maximum cardinality to 1) in the Data Aggregate Description. Each column corresponds to a description. If you click a column cell, the default value indicated in the Meta Entity is displayed. However, it can be modified by entering directly another value or by opening a dialog box for longer values. Click '+' to add other lines in the table or − to delete them.

Results

Figure 1. Example of 'Description Detail' table with multiple values for simple fields in a Data Aggregate Description Table used to enter/modify the values in the simple fields of a Data Aggregate Description with multiple values

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