Making the Right Relationship

kklosson

I have a business object for which I need several large plain text fields. To keep the record size of the main BO reasonable, I will create a separate business object for each narrative item.

The relationship is 1:1.

In order to display and update the narrative BO from the form of the primary business object, I have set the narrative BO as the "owner" of the main BO and I use a shortcut to the narrative attribute in the narrative BO. Then I use an HTML button to call a process to create or update the narrative BO. This all works.

I have to do this for about 10 narrative objects so I want to be certain I am using a good model and I am unsure when a Peer relationship should be used.

If you can follow this logic, does this appear to be the best way to proceed?

tford

I have set the narrative BO as the "owner" of the main BO

Shouldn't you have the main BO own each of the narrative BOs?

kklosson

That would be my normal inclination but I need to display an attribute on the form of the primary business object. The only way I know of to do that is to create a shortcut and shortcuts only point to parent (owner) objects. Hence, my question about my structure for this relationship.

tford

Why not just show the narrative BOs on the primary BO as reference items?

kklosson

Well, because it's a 1:1, a list of items makes no sense. The user should expect to be able to enter the narrative information as part of the record they are viewing. They should also expect to be able to read the narrative text without opening a secondary record. As is, I can do this by creating a parent BO with a shortcut to the narrative text. I use a custom button to launch a process to create or update the narrative text. My problem in doing so is that I can't seem to create a new record in the context of an IF statement.

Hmmmm. Still open to ideas.

tford

Will this work for your needs? :

1) Parent BO owns Narrative BO

2) In the presentation of the Narrative, turn on "Use Form". This will allow the narrative to look like it's part of the Parent BO.

Note that you can control the banner that appears above the Narrative on the Parent form by changing the Reference element Label --- or leaving it blank.

tford

PS -- your earlier statement that

shortcuts only point to parent (owner) objects

is NOT accurate.

Shortcuts CAN exist in Parent objects as long as the relationship to the Child object is NOT "multiple allowed"