Collapsing/Expanding Complex Fields

New

You can expand and collapse complex fields to show or hide their fields in the Define Data and Redefine Ports dialog boxes by clicking the plus (+) and minus (-) signs next to the complex fields. You can also expand all the complex fields simultaneously by clicking the Expand All Fields button in the relevant dialog box. You can specify that all fields should be automatically expanded by default, by selecting the Automatically expand fields checkbox in the Design group of the Options panel.

Searching for Nodes and Fields

New

You can search for specific dataset nodes and fields in the Define Data and Redefine Ports dialog boxes. You can also search for specific fields in the Dynamic Expression Editor dialog box. Enter the search string in the Search for field and then click the Search button. You can refine your search by choosing one or more options from the Advanced Search Options dropdown list.

Results that match your criteria are displayed in the Search Results tab at the bottom of the dialog box. You can select a field in the results list to highlight it in the tree or field list of the dialog box.

Checking Which Fields Have Bound Controls

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In the Define Data dialog box, you can display a list of all the fields in the current dataset that have controls defined for them. Choose  View Information Pane and choose the Controls tab. A list of all the fields with bound controls is displayed. You can select a field in the results list to highlight it in the field list above (including expanding the parent node if necessary).

Applying Data Changes

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If you add or remove ports or fields in the Redefine Ports, Replace Component, Reload Component, and Reload Data Service dialog boxes, and those ports or fields are connected to another element, a prompt is displayed enabling you to choose whether to apply the changes to any relevant connected elements. If you choose to apply the changes, the corresponding automatic mappings are also updated. In the same prompt, you can also choose whether to add or remove controls for the corresponding fields in the relevant connected elements.

Skipping Nodes in Data Mapping

New

When mapping clustered datasets using the Map Data dialog box, you can now skip nodes in the data hierarchy. This enables you to select a subset of the data nodes that are available in a clustered dataset, and use them directly in your model, instead of having to model according to each level in the data hierarchy.

Web Services Navigator Support

New

You can use the Web Services Navigator directly from Visual Composer to test the functionality of Web services (including Web services with clustered datasets). The Web Services Navigator is automatically opened when you choose Test Data Service from the context menu of a Web service on the Design board. For more information about the Web Services Navigator, refer to Testing Web Services in the Web Services Navigator.

Normalization of Data Services No Longer Performed

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Data services used in Visual Composer models are no longer normalized automatically upon use.

Normalization finds singleton records that can be eliminated as actual records and turned into structured fields (or eliminated altogether). Basically, a normalized dataset and a non-normalized dataset contain the same structure information; the main difference is where this information is located – either in the structure itself (the non-normalized dataset) or in the structure and in the application name (the normalized dataset).

Note that datasets that were normalized in an earlier release of Visual Composer remain normalized when opened in this release.