Location Object - design opinion

ddumas

I am new to AIM.

I am thinking of creating a Location Object, for the purpose of subclassing an address.

So, based on locale "region", the subclass could be different.

Ex. US addresses are house number, street1 street2, city, state, postal code.

I would then make that an attribute of a Person, or Company object, owned by the Person, or Company.

In the past, I have used separate fields for each of these in the main object. May the subclassing is overkill.

Do you see any disadvantages of this design, as opposed to just creating separate attributes in the main object?

Dave

pbrad

Hi,
Perhaps users that have used locales in their applications could comment here but it seems to me that you could create several variations of the English locale as you are really only talking about partial labelling variances here. It would seem to be a far simpler approach and simpler is always better.

Cheers,
Pete

ddumas

pbrad wrote
Hi,
Perhaps users that have used locales in their applications could comment here but it seems to me that you could create several variations of the English locale as you are really only talking about partial labelling variances here. It would seem to be a far simpler approach and simpler is always better.

Cheers,
Pete

Thanks. So Pete, you see creating a separate location object as positive, instead of just creating separate attributes in side the main object (person, company, etc.)?

pbrad

Hi,
I wasn't really commenting on that. I was saying that if I understood you correctly you wanted to conditionally show the correct label based on location. For example, if you had an attribute called zipcode, you could define say a Canadian locale where the value for this label would be Postal Code and a US locale where the value for this label would be Zip Code. You would then only need the one attribute and the label presented would be based on the locale of the LoggedInRegularUser. I haven't personally used locales as I have been lucky enough to work in only one language so far but I'm pretty sure that this approach would work.

If, in fact, you need separate attributes for each location I would tend to keep them within the object and then conditionally show/hide them on the form using the several methods available to you for doing so.

Cheers,
Pete

ddumas

pbrad wrote
Hi,
I wasn't really commenting on that. I was saying that if I understood you correctly you wanted to conditionally show the correct label based on location. For example, if you had an attribute called zipcode, you could define say a Canadian locale where the value for this label would be Postal Code and a US locale where the value for this label would be Zip Code. You would then only need the one attribute and the label presented would be based on the locale of the LoggedInRegularUser. I haven't personally used locales as I have been lucky enough to work in only one language so far but I'm pretty sure that this approach would work.

If, in fact, you need separate attributes for each location I would tend to keep them within the object and then conditionally show/hide them on the form using the several methods available to you for doing so.

Cheers,
Pete

I like the conditional display design you reference. I will have to learn more about LoggedInRegularUser.

I think I will use a Location (address) as an object, create a Locations attribute in my main objects (person, company) of type Location. That way, I can have multiple addresses in my main objects. I can set a primary_location_flag to indicate which one is primary, and have a location type (work, home, main, branch, etc). Not sure how to enforce db integrity in Awaire IM, as only one record instance for a main object's children locations should have the primary_location_flag = 1 (true)

Dave