Jumping back a little bit as I catch up...
All the other processes are entirely visual at present, so I'm
reluctant to add dialogs, but...
Actually I wouldn't mind dropdowns in other places, such as collection
navigation.
I agree, it would be nice to have a 'jump to' for collections. However I
can't draw controls on the canvas, so it would have to come in some sort
of dialog or sit in the control panel (actually I might be able to place
it in the Properties view). There would have to be two drop-downs, one
which selects the attribute to use for navigation and the other for
selecting the actual record using that attribute. How does that sound?
Actually I can do better (I'll leave those ideas there though in case
they inspire any others). I can place two buttons side by side at the
bottom of the collection (basic buttons can be drawn), and have clicking
on them trigger popup/context menus so that they effectively function
like combo boxes.
At the moment I think the best (read 'only practical') way to do it
is via a wizard. The user selects a NamedQuery from the map, sets
key/value parameters, and picks from the results.
How about expanding the control panel capabilities? Current control
panel opens a new "Object Editor" window on every query run. We can do
two things:
* (optionally) open the results in the same Object Editor.
I see where you are coming from, but this would introduce quite some
complexity because the automatic graph layout algorithm relies on the
graph being fully connected. I have seen an application where dummy
edges are introduced to counter this, but it compromises the algorithm
to a certain extent - in the normal case the layout isn't as good.
* support entering query parameters when running the query (judging by
your earlier questions, you were looking at parameterized queries
already). This way users can pinpoint the right object.
One catch with the last point is that supported parameter names are
not available via the metadata. So the user will have to specify
values and *keys*. In the future we may provide a collection of valid
keys via EntityResolver.
The other thing I can do is allow users to run SelectQueries against a
specified entity name, entering criteria. That is how the wizard for
Insert Existing runs at the moment.
Dealing with inserting existing objects has been difficult. There are a
few idiosyncrasies that I need to iron out, but it is mostly functional.
Next is 'Remove from collection'.
Marcel
