Altova RecordsManager

Data Fields

In each data container of your app created in RecordsManager, end users enter records to build up the data stored in the database. Every record is defined by a number of fields.

RecordsManager offers a wide variety of field types, including:

To speed development while defining fields, you can copy any number of previously defined fields from other data containers as a starting point, and then modify them as needed.

Data Validation

You can define multiple validation checks per field using XPath expressions, which also define the error message to be shown to the user. Validation issues can be set to error (record cannot be saved) or warning (message shown to user but the record can be saved).

In addition to per-field validation, you can define per-record validation where multiple fields are validated against each other.

Entered data can be constrained by the following options:

You can supply editing hints that will be displayed when a field is empty to help guide valid data entry, and it’s also possible to supply a list of predefined values. These can be listed manually by the admin during set up, imported from a CSV or XML file, or imported from data previously entered by users in the same field. The list values can be sorted automatically, for instance to show recently used values first.

It’s easy for the admin to allow the selection of only one or multiple values and whether the end users can extend the list on the fly when entering data. You can even configure which user groups can see which part of a given list for granular customization.

Identity Fields

Each record can be identified by one or more fields; in each container, you will configure one or more fields to be Identity Fields. For example, in an HR application, employees will typically have unique ID numbers, so the ID number field can be used to identify records in the Person data container. In the case of some data containers, more than one field might be necessary to come closer to uniqueness (for example, a person’s First, Middle, and Last names as shown below).

Identity fields are needed to link from one data container to another and used to show parent records within a child record.

What’s Next?

After defining fields and validation rules, you can configure the various forms used in your app for searching, entering, emailing, and reporting data.