Creating A Multi-Select Structure

If you want to create a many-to-many relationship between objects, OneData provides you an easy to use interface through multi-select constructs.

For more information about the structure of a multi-select construct, see Multi-Select Structure and Linkages.

Example scenario: Create new objects: 'ms_sd_country_state', which holds the many-to-many relationship between the 'ms_sd_state' and 'ms_sd_country' entities. Create a Logical column in the 'ms_sd_country' object that will display a multi-select box showing the list of Countries and States

ms_sd_country_state	ms_sd_state	ms_sd_country
Country_ID	State_ID	Country_ID
State_ID	State_Name	Country_Name
		State_ID

1. On the Menu toolbar, click Define > objects.

2. Click Add Data Object and complete the fields to create ms_sd_country_state.

3. Similarly, create the three objects ms_sd_state, and ms_sd_country.

4. Define the object properties:

a. While defining the ms_sd_country_state entity, create two foreign key constraints, one on Country_ID to the ms_sd_country object, and the other on State_ID to the ms_sd_state object. Display the Country and State Names, and show as Lookup.

b. For the ms_sd_country entity: while defining the State_ID column, select Yes in Is Logical Column?.

e. In the ms_sd_state object, create a foreign key constraint on State_ID. Display the State Name and show as Lookup.

5. Navigate to Data Manager.

6. ms_sd_country is now configured to show the states as a multi-select box. Since the logical column was configured as “Yes”, the multi-select box is available upon Insert and Edit of Countries and mappings can be managed by using the Display Values > Linkages command. If the logical column were configured as a Linkages Attribute, the multi-select mapping would only be visible from the Linkages command and not upon Insert or Edit.

Note:

To display country name instead of country ID in the Linkages mapping screen, select the Is Description Column? for the Country_Name column.