Hi developers, Something came across my mind when I investigated my first careful steps towards an attribute table widget, i.e. a widget that allows to view/edit the attribute values of features.
I have already worked with several kinds of tables so far: DBase tables and meteorological time series data, to name just a few. Somehow the pattern is always similar: - The rows are populated by database entries, records, features or however you like to call it. - The columns are the attributes, fields, properties or however you like to call it. - Each column has a data type, usually constrained by a class, sometimes being more specific. - Usually the column descriptions are quite similar even though the data stored (geographical features, wether data, persons, or simply "any database content") are very different: Restrictions apply, such as decimal digits (precistion) and such. Usually there is something like a default value and/or a nodata value. - Usually the intent of showing a table (editable or not) with such data to the user is also similar and the functions to be done are the same (edit the values, sort by column x, select entries, add record, delete record etc. So I wonder ... why I cannot remember having seen a generic table API that could serve for all sorts of database-driven tables and specifically could be the basis for a GeoAPI Feature model, meteorological time series' or simply ANY tables retrieved from any database, lets say via JDBC. Wouln't it be nice to have ONE table widget that could display them all? (I am not speaking about the data specific functions, but the more generic features like displaying/editing and editing numeric/String/boolean data and lists of such data. Of course, the JFace viewer widgets have recognized this, so it is not a big deal to create content and label providers as well as cell editors for each kind of tabular data. Still I feel that the notion of "tabular data" has been reinvented several times now with different names, and I have to include my own API for meteorological data here as well (although it was designed to be somewhat reusable). To cut long stories short: Would it be possible to have a generic database table API and have the GeoAPI feature model inherit from it (by adding the methods that are specific for GeoAPI and spatial data on top)? I imagine something like javax.swing.table.TableModel, but more sophisticated, in order to cope with almost any sort of tabular data. (Note that my thoughts arose from reviewing the current GeoAPI feature interfaces, NOT the complex feature API. I am not sure, if complex features and feature collections can still be see as a special case of tabular data or if they depart too much from this model.) Any thoughts from you about this? -- Matthias Basler [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Geotools-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geotools-devel
