How do your Repository Users find what Data Sources the various Fields are in?
This page shows you how fast and convenient custom development in RoAccess can be.
Here is how TXU (11th largest Energy company in the world) navigates from Fields to Data Sources, with actual screen captures.
First of all. Fields are the lowest data element, like Table Columns, Record fields or fields in a flat file.
A Data Source can be application database, like CIS+ or other application database . The data source may be logical, where the engine type, like Oracle, is irrelevant. The physical model may take into consideration the actual engine.
A Record can contain Fields or Records which in turn contain Records which eventually contain Fields. So you have both direct and recursive relationships.
You can have Logical Fields, Records and Data Sources.
You can have Physical Fields, Records and Data Sources.
Given that Repository users may not easily distinguish physical from logical names and structures, TXU chose to search BOTH simultaneously.
This system begins with a custom Graphics screen created in Front Page. This required no RoAccess programming.
This displayed the Data Dictionary screen, which again required no RoAccess programming.
It then displays two custom screens to list the Fields and then list the Data Sources, which are "simple user written applications". These two applications each were less that 100 lines. Considering that most of the lines are comments and HTML layout, the actual code is very small, and mostly contains "boilerplate" code which is a part of all applications. This entire application was done with two, tiny, custom DHTML screens, which each were written and tested each in less than an hour. By any standard, this is fast development!
Finally the standard RoAccess display screen is used to display all the Data Source metadata.
The use of standard RoAccess screens as part of custom development greatly reduces the amount of time and effort needed to bring up new applications. Typically you only have to create small, intermediate "bridge" screens that bridge between standard RoAccess screens.
They began with a Frames Mode Image with hotspots that conformed to look and feel to the TXU international WEB site standards and practices. Standards conformance was important. One of the hotspots is Data Dictionary. Below is a screen snapshot:
After entering the wildcard for the Field Name(s), click GO. That brings up the Fields Selection Screen. All the matching Fields in the Repository are listed. You select which Field(s) you want to run the search on:
That then brings up a listing of the various Data Sources that contain one or more of these Fields:
When clicking on of a Data Source hyperlink, the standard RoAccess screen appears on the right. Note: the screens above and below in the center frames are tiny custom RoAccess programs. The display on the Right is standard RoAccess, unmodified.
Both Logical and Physical schemas were searched, To find where the Fields with *ACCT* fit into the Data Sources and contained Records, click on one of the L (Logical) or P (Physical) Data Dictionary custom report modules on the upper right. They result in the following report:
This is a beautiful report starting with the Data Source and showing every Field and every recursive Record containing the fields. Merely use the browser's "Search In Page" function to find all the *ACCT* occurrences. You then see those Fields in context. The "Send as Excel File" is useful when users want to process the results into other documents or programs, and it goes directly into Excel, without you having to start Excel up. Very convenient! Especially for non-technical, business users.
Note: the Physical (P) and Logical (L) reports icons were created earlier in the project. The icons were created using Adobe Photoshop, and were added to RoAccess to display on the Standard Item Display screen whenever an Item of Type DATA_SOURCE, RECORD or DATA_SOURCE_VERSION is being displayed. Adding the Icons to this standard RoAccess screen required no programming, only a configuration entry.
The two reports programs (P and L) are a combination of RPL (Rochade Procedure Language), HTML and scripting statements doing special Path Reports on the fly. Both reports are the same except for the names of the ItemTypes and which Attributes (logical or physical) to follow. The first report application because of the involved nesting of Path Report Results and specialized HTML handling took only 6 hours to create and test, and 3 hours to add the Excel option. The second report, then only took 30 minutes, using the first as its starting point.