Operators (SAP Library - Modeling Composite Views with Visual Composer)

Operators

An operator is a mechanism used to manipulate data returned from a data service according to specified criteria, prior to display in a model view.

You add operators to your model by dragging them from the Compose task panel to the Design board. You define their logic and flow, and their connections to other elements, in the Design board. After you add an operator to the Design board, you define its parameters by right-clicking the operator icon and choosing Define Operator from the context menu. For more information about the Define Operator dialog box for each operator type, see Operator Dialog Boxes in the Visual Composer Reference Guide.

The following table lists the operators that are available when building your composite view or service component:

Name	Icon	Description
Filter		Defines selection criteria for retrieving and displaying records in a dataset. For example, you can filter documents by Creation Date so that only documents created on the specified date are displayed.
Sort		Sorts data in ascending or descending order according to a specified field. For example, you may want to alphabetically sort a list of records by Name, with a secondary sort according to Date, newest to oldest.
Aggregate		Aggregates the values of all the records of a specified field into a single record. For example, you may want to create an output record that totals the values of all the material orders.
Distinct		Omits records containing duplicate data from the dataset. Note that the fewer fields marked as distinct, the fewer records are returned. For example, a data service returns the following fields: Bank Country, Bank Key, and Bank Name. If only Bank Country is marked as distinct, the first appearance of a value, such as France, in the combination of Bank Country–Bank Key–Bank Name is returned. Any subsequent combination containing France is not returned. If, on the other hand, all three fields are marked as distinct, each combination becomes distinct, so that the potential list of results is greater.
Union		Merges the data of multiple datasets into a new dataset. You connect each data source output port (for example, data service, form view, table view, or other operator) that you want to merge to a separate input port on the Union operator. You add and remove ports on the operator by right-clicking the operator icon on the Design board and choosing Add Port or Remove Port from the context menu. You can add an unlimited number of ports. For example, you may have a field in one data service called FirstName and a field in another dataset called FName. You can use the Union operator to combine the data from these two fields into a single field called Name. You can select the Key column to specify that the entries merged into the new Name field are unique (any duplicate entries from the source fields are not added to the target field).
Switch		Defines multiple execution flows. You can use the Switch operator to receive input from multiple sources (such as a data service and a form view) and pass the received data as input to a single model element. You connect each data source output port (for example, data service, form view, table view, or other operator) to a separate input port on the Switch operator. You add and remove ports on the operator by right-clicking the operator icon on the Design board and choosing Add Port or Remove Port from the context menu. You can add an unlimited number of ports.
Service Component		Creates a new data service component. You can use this operator to model a customized data service that performs data processing that a group of operators or an advanced service might otherwise perform.