What Is A Software Object?

Software Objects are the building blocks of your software program. You can think of these as you individual windows.

For example: You may be creating a customer management program for your company. You will need to keep track of your customers, products, orders and so on...
In your program, you will create a software object for customer, a software object for products and a software object for orders. These will be the windows that you interact with while using your software programs.

To create a new Software Object, click the Software Objects tab and click the New button.

Software Object Window

This is where you will build or edit your Software Object.

Software Name and Caption

1: You will create a Software Object Name here.

Name Rules:
Do not use any type of special characters like . $ % & * = - and so on.

2: Caption is what you and your end users will see within the software itself.

Customization

1: Creatable Item is checked when you don't want your end users to be able to create new records for that particular Software Object.

2: Navigation will help you organize your software objects into groups for easy management. If you type in the same name for multiple Software Objects, then those Software Objects will be grouped together.

3: Software Object Type allows you to quickly create your programs without a lot of work. There are several Object Type templates to choose from that will already have predefined editors added.

Image

4: Double clicking on the Image box will bring up a menu that you can use to select a image to represent your Software Object.

Modules

5: Audit Trail module will tell the program to track changes to this Software Object for audit purposes. This will only work if the Audit Trail Module is turned on for the whole software program.

6: Mail Merge module will allow you to use mail merge technology for this Software Object. All templates using this Software Object will be displayed when running the Mail Merge wizard.

7: Reports/Analysis will add this Software Object to the reports and charts module if turned on for the software program.

8: Clonable will allow you and your users to copy the record by clicking one button.

Grid View

9: By default, your grid view is not editable. You can turn on editing to allow your users to quickly edit records without opening up the details.

10: Normally, you need to open up a detail window to create a new object. By selecting the New Item Row, the user will be able to create a new record right in the grid.

11: Clicking on the Software Object item, in the navigation, brings up the grid view that lists all the records for that Software Object. Clicking on the Show List and Detail will show the detail view to the left of the grid. Clicking on any record will display the details to the right of the grid.

12: Show Children in Grid will display all items that are related to the current record. For example: If you have a Company object that is related to a Contact object. You can have many Contacts working at the same company. When you bring up the Company list, you will also be able to see all the Contacts within that company in the same grid.

Property Editors

Property Editors are the items on the windows and grids that you and your users will be interacting with. There are several different types to choose from including by not limited to text fields, combo boxes, picture boxes, numerics, currency, date fields and so on...

Calculations

A lot of times we need to calculate fields based on formulas for our end users. Now we can create a fields that will be calculated based on other editors.

Description

When working on your own software program, there can be a lot of different Software Objects that will be used to make up all the functionality that you may need. In order to better organize this functionality, you can use the description fields to keep track of why the Software Object was created. This is purely for your own use.

Example Software Object Main Window

Example Software Object Detail Window