Container Properties and Actions
The most essential property of a container is its set of fields. These can be defined at the time the container is created, but can also be edited at any later time. The fields of a container represent the attributes of that container and its records. For example, a Person container might have a Name field, an Email field, and a Responsibility field. These fields would then represent the attributes of Person records of the Person container. See Fields for a complete description.
In addition to configuring its fields, you can also configure a container in the following ways:
•Create filters for the display of the container's records and use of the container's fields. See Filters.
•Create forms that will be used for the entry of container data, for the generation of reports, and for exporting data to other formats. See Forms.
•Validate individual fields and/or entire records. See Validation of Fields and Records.
•Rename the container. See Container Operations.
•Add a parent container and/or children containers. See Container Operations.
•Duplicate the container. See Container Operations.
•Remove the container. See Container Operations.
•Change the type of link to the parent container (between a parent–child link and a loose link). See Container Operations.
•Import data from external XML files. See Container Operations.
Define the components of a container as described in the subsections of this section.
Container icons
All containers have the following icons.
 | Container Settings |
 | Move Up/Down |
Container Settings
The container settings form enables you to specify whether the container should contain one record only or multiple records. By default the option is set to multiple records. The record of a single-record container must be explicitly added by the system user. Once added, this record can be edited, but not deleted.
Move Up/Down: Changing the order of sibling containers
If a container has sibling containers (that is, there are other containers at the same level), then the Move Up/Down icon on the right is enabled. Click it to change the order of the current container relative to its siblings.
Validation rules for records of the container
You can specify one or more validation rules for records of the container. This will ensure that every record must fulfill certain requirements. For example, the record of a person or company can be validated to ensure that at least a telephone number or an email address is entered in the record before it is saved. If validation fails, then either an error or a warning—according to what you decide—is triggered with an appropriate message. In the case of an error, the record is not saved till the error is fixed and validation is successful.
See Validation of Fields and Records for information about validation.