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Property Types
Property types are fundamental types which you can chose from to create named types. They equate to the data types within a programming language or database. EVA Netmodeler has basic types which are similar to programming
languages, as well as some special types which exhibit special behavior:
- String
The simplest type. Contains alphabetic, numeric and special characters, such as punctuation. Can be up to 255 characters long.
- Archi Decimal
Contains a decimal value, comprising a whole number and a fractional portion. Examples:
100
1.50
123456.789
0.0000001
- Archi Color
An archi color property holds a string representing a colour value expressed using HTML standards. It can take one of two forms:
- It can be expressed using values for Red, Green and Blue: A hash character, followed by the hexadecimal values (00-FF) for each of the three basic colors (Red, Green, Blue). 00 - FF hexadecimal is the equivalent of
0-255 in decimal. Thus
#FFFFFF will be full intensity of all colours i.e. white
#000000 will be no colour i.e. black
#888888 will be grey
#FF0000 will be pure red
- You can pick a color name e.g.
Gold
Light Blue
Coral etc.
EVA Netmodeler will display a list to chose from. It will also give you a sample of each color
- Archi Calculated Property
A Calc property in EVA Netmodeler is akin to a formula in a spreadsheet. It allows definition of derived items. These can be calculated from
properties of the item in which they occur, properties of items related to the current item, or properties from other nominated items within the EVA Netmodeler repository.
Calc definitions are written in Smalltalk code.
EVA Netmodeler provides an API which makes it easy to reference properties of the current item, related items or other items in the knowledge base without writing any access or retrieval code.
The derivation is
performed whenever the item containing the calc property is displayed.
Refer to the Calc Fields section for an in-depth discussion of this facility.
- Archi Discussion Calc properties Operate in the same way as normal Calculated Properties, except that they provide for much longer formulae.
- Archi Directory
Holds a path to a directory on the server, which EVA Netmodeler will expose for web browsing. Usually used to allow browsing of content external to EVA Netmodeler. more details
- Archi Font
A font style expressed in HTML compatible form. This can specify the font size, style, and other attributes, such as bold, italic etc.
Example:
font face=Arial, size=2
- Archi Date Created
Automatically records the date on which an item was created.
- Archi Last Updated
Automatically records the date and time the item was last updated.
- Archi Lookup
An Archi lookup property is used to provide a list of valid values for a user to select from at entry or edit time.
The lookup property identifies the name of a list
defined using the LookupType and LookupItem types. See the lookup model section for more information on how to configure EVA Netmodeler to manage lookup lists.
- Archi Password
A data type designed to hold passwords. Does not display a value, unless the user has edit rights to the property and is in edit mode.
- Archi Select Browser
A type that allows the user to select an EVA Netmodeler browser. Normally used to allow selection of default browser for a user, or in which browser to activate items selected in the spatial
browser.
- Archi Touched By
Automatically records the user id of the last user to modify the item.
- Archi Updated By
Records the identity of a user, who is then the only authorised editor of the item on which this value is recorded. This is used by EVA Netmodeler to provide item level security. IT is usually
used where different items within the same type must have different authorised editors. e.g. Budgets may be viewed by all managers, but only a specific manager may edit his or her own budget.
- Archi Picture
Contains a web friendly picture/graphic file, which is displayed whenever the item holding the property is viewed.
- Archi Hotlinks
contain a URL which points to browser friendly content. This could be an HTML document (web page), local or remote, or other document (e.g. Word Document, Excel Spreadsheet, Power Point Presentation, Adobe Acrobat (pdf) file etc. - basically any document which your web browser, associated plug ins, or helper applications which you have installed on the desktop machine, can handle). Hotlinks are displayed as clickable hyperlinks. When they are selected they will link to the associated content. No restrictions are placed on what you link to, provided that they are valid URL's. They can be web addresses or local files. Note that the URL
must start with the scheme identifier e.g. HTTP://, FTP://, File://, etc
- Archi Help Hotlinks contain a URL which points to browser friendly content. This is normally used to allow the user to provide help associated with instances of a type. This is most useful where the type is actually
a category and the instances define the categories. The help hotlink can provide a way to explain the way in which the category has been defined, provide examples etc. Properties of this type will generate a "help" button
instead of showing the value of the link.
- Archi Content type allows you to reference content as for Hotlinks above, but with the added behaviour that the content is automatically retrieved, rather than displayed as a clickable link.
- Archi Templates are also links to external content, but have much richer behaviour. Templates work with default nodes to define standard document formats that you always want associated with a particular type within EVA Netmodeler.
- Archi Document property type is similar to a template, the only difference being that the user has the option to upload a new document when a new item is created (the template property
type does not provide this option), and the user has the option to change the name and type of the file stored in a Document property type. We explain documents and defaults in more detail in the Defaults section.
- Archi Discussion creates a free form text property. You can enter long descriptions or specifications into this type. It will be displayed in a multi- line box and will appear as a
multiline text edit box during editing.
- Archi Discussion Thread allows a discussion thread to be linked to any item in EVA Netmodeler which has an property of this type. A threaded discussion allows various parties to pose questions, post answers, or
comment on previously posted entries. Replies are "indented" to show to which previous item they refer. These items operate in a similar way to traditional news groups on the Internet.
- Archi Discussion HTML
property types allow users to enter long descriptions in HTML in edit or create mode, a TEXTAREA will be displayed into which users may enter multiple lines of text. The TEXTAREA will display both horizontal and vertical scroll bars.
A "HTML Editor" button will be displayed as well. When the user clicks on this button, a pop-up window will be displayed. A JavaScript HTML Editor may be enabled on this popup-window by using the "EditScreenBottomScript" setting.
Unlike the Archie2Discussion Property Type, text is not encoded during display mode. The HTML contained in properties of this type will become part of the HTML for the page and will be processed as such by the browser.
- Archi Date holds legal dates.
See the sections on Time/Calendar Related Items and Calendar Browser to find out more about how to use Date property types with other EVA Netmodeler features.
Refer to the Property Types section under Meta Modeler for a more formal specification of the EVA Netmodeler property types
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