This page is for application designers who need to create views of data and bind them to components on screens. Todo-Anthony- check this page is correct when the GUI is finalised.

Overview

PhixFlow stores data in tables, formally known as streams. Tables can contain more data than you want to show to a user on the screen. For this reason, whenever you show data on a screen, you first compile a view of the data. A view is made up of:

Attributes
1. Attributes from the base table.
  1. You can hide attributes that you want access to but do not necessarily want a user to see. For Example the UID of a record.
2. Attributes from related tables.
  1. These are the attributes available to the view as the table they originate from shares a relationship with the base table as defined in the ERDs; see Understanding ERDs and Views. Views which contain these type of attributes are referred to as a relational view.
Records:
1. For each table, the view includes records specified in the tables default period. This can be all data (usually for transactional data), or only the latest.
2. Can be sorted, filtered and ordered.
Components:
1. The following components are specifically designed to display a view:
  1. Grid
  2. Line Graph
  3. Vertical Bar Chart
  4. Horizontal Bar Chart
  5. Pie Chart
  6. Card
2. These views can be added a screen, content can typically be added by dragging specific attributes from a table onto it. In the case os card any palette item can be added.

How to Create and Display a View

As views are designed to display data on a screen, creating a view includes binding it to a component.

Sections on this page

Step 1 Select a table

Drag a table onto a screen, this can be achieved by dragging
- a table from the list in the repository.
- a table icon from a table's properties.
PhixFlow asks you how you want the data to be displayed, select a data component:
The view will be added to the screen.

Step 2 Select attributes

Drag attributes from the Attribute Selection window onto the view.
Start with attributes from the base stream.
Optionally, click on related streams to show additional attributes that are available.
When you have added all the attributes you require, close the window.

Step 3 Apply filtering and sorting for records

You have now created your view and added it to a screen. Optionally, specify if you want to apply any filters or sort orders to the data records:

Select the view you have added.
1. You may need to right click the view and select Show Stream View Configuration.
The properties tab opens:
Select an existing Default Sort Order, Default Filter or Background Filter
1. Note the filter are applied when the use sees the view, however the default view can be removed by the user.

Select a data component from the popup menu:

In the Attribute Selection window:

on the right select related streams
on the left, select specific attributes from the stream.
Todo-Anthony - replace images

Reusing Views

Once you have created a view, you can reuse it. In the repository, you can find a view listed under it's base stream.

Form Field Names

When you drag attributes from the Attribute Selection window onto a form, PhixFlow adds a field and label for each attribute. By default, the label is the attribute's name. However, for an attribute in a related stream, this depends on the Display Name option. For example:

Primary key → Foreign key
stream.attribute → related-stream.attribute
Company.UID → Supplier.Company-Name

Where Supplier.Company-Name has Display Name:

selected, PhixFlow uses "Company-Name" as the label.
not selected, PhixFlow uses "UID" as the label.

For information about primary and foreign keys and the Display Name option; see Understanding ERDs and Views.

Compiling Views