Adding Associations Between Data Objects 

Use

In this tutorial, the CUSTOMER_ID attribute of the Service Order data object is associated with the CUSTOMER_ID attribute of the Customer data object. The SERIAL_NO attribute of the Service Order data object is associated with the SERIAL_NO attribute of the Equipment data object:

You define the association in the Service Order data object as the referred field must be the back-end key field in the root node of the referred data object. In this tutorial, the associations are therefore defined in the Service Order data object.

The following procedure describes how to define the association between the Service Order data object and the Customer data object.

The equivalent values for the Equipment data object are specified in parentheses.

Procedure

       1.      Locate and click the CUSTOMER (EQUIPMENT) node of the Service Order data object with the secondary mouse button and choose Change.

       2.      Choose the Node Association tab.

       3.      Choose Add Association.

The Association Wizard starts.

       4.      Follow the steps in the Association Wizard:

                            a.      Enter the association name.

This is a three-character key identifying the association, for example CUS (EQU).

                            b.      Enter the description for the association (optional).

                            c.      Select the Customer data object (Equipment data object) as the data object with which you want to establish the association.

                            d.      Select the association type Complete, as your referring data object node, the CUSTOMER node of the Service Order data object, contains all the back-end key fields of the referred data object.

You select the association type Partial only if a subset of the back-end keys of the referred data object is available in the referring data object node. Partial associations are only used in special cases.

The Key Mapping for Association table appears with the node attributes of the associated data object listed in the Associated Node Attributes column.

                            e.      Select the node attributes to be mapped, in this example the CUSTOMER_ID (SERIAL_NO) attribute to be mapped to the CUSTOMER_ID (SERIAL_NO) attribute of the associated data object.

                              f.      Select the Generate Sync Key button to have a synchronization key generated to be mapped to the synchronization key of the associated Customer data object (Equipment data object).

The generated synchronization key attribute is added to the attributes of the CUSTOMER (EQUIPMENT) node of the Service Order data object. The generated attribute is named CUS_SYNCKEY_MMW (EQU_SYNCKEY_MMW).

If you have created a synchronization key field (for example, ASSOCIATION_KEY) in the referring node of the Service Order data object, you can also select this here instead of having one generated.

                            g.      Leave all link fields and values empty, as these are not required in the tutorial.

                            h.      Complete the association and save your entries.

You have created the associations between the Service Order data object and the Customer data object and between the Service Order data object and the Equipment data object. You can now proceed to define the distribution logic. When you create a dependency between these data objects, you can use the association you have defined here as a basis.