Workspace of the Object Designer

The workspace of the Object Designer (figure 1) consists of several functional areas and contains controls and tools used for creating objects.

Fig. 1. — The object designer workspace

 

Object structure area (1)

The object structure area shows columns and indexes added to the object. For example, the structure of the "Account" object contains the "Name", "Ownership Type", "Primary Contract", "Parent Account" and other columns.

Column types in the object structure depend on the type of data in the columns. Column indexes are designed to speed up operations with the columns, such as search and filtering.

You can add necessary items to the object structure using the [Add] menu that contains the list of all available object components.

Properties and events area (2)

You can change the set of individual characteristics of the object and its items on the [Properties] tab. This includes setting the default value or making columns required.

This tab also provides the possibility for the generation of events, processing of which allows creating operating logic of the object when the user takes certain actions, for example, filling of required fields before saving entries in the course of event processing.

Toolbar (3)

In addition to the standard buttons, the Object Designer toolbar includes the following buttons:

Add	Add an item to the object structure. The menu contains the list of all available types of columns and indexes.
Delete	Delete of columns from the object. NOTE Deleting columns from an object is similar to deletion of columns from the corresponding table of the system database.
Up	Move the item up in the object structure.
Down	Move the item down in the object structure.

Settings window

In addition to the standard items, the configuration window of the Object Designer also contains the following items:

Show Indexes	Display indexes in the object structure.
Show entire list of column types	Display full list of structure items in menu [Add] (menu shows only basic items by default).
Show system columns	Display the columns, the [Use Mode] property of which contains an "Extended" or "Never" value. For example, columns with information on primary keys ("ID") of object records are not shown in the object structure by default.