Validate and action events

You can customize the asset Maximo® business object (MBO) by adding custom business logic that is based on the asset purchase price or attribute purchaseprice in asset value. For example, you can set the vendor field to be required or not required based on the purchaseprice attribute value and also to calculate the replacement cost based on the purchase price. And you can ensure that the purchase price does not exceed a maximum allowed value.

The logic must be injected at the modification of the purchaseprice attribute value, which implies that it is modeled as an attribute launch point. A validation element exists in the requirement, where the purchaseprice cannot exceed a certain limit. An action element is also available in which the state of the vendor attribute and the replacementcost value is set based on the purchaseprice value. The first requirement of validation needs to be handled by the attribute validate event. The second requirement needs to be handled in the attribute action event.

The validate script can be simple.

if purchaseprice > 200:
  service.error("some","error")

You can use the implicit variable purchaseprice, which is the attribute that the launch point is based on, and also use service.error(..) to produce the necessary MXException for this validation.

The following script is for the attribute action event:

if purchaseprice >= 100:
  vend_required=True
else:
  vend_required=False
  rc = purchaseprice/2

This script uses two explicitly defined OUT variables: vend for the vendor attribute and rc for the replacement cost attribute. By using the implicit variable vend_required, you can control the state of the vendor attribute to be required or not required. You can also set the replacement cost by setting rc. To do these tasks without using any of these explicitly defined variables, use the standard MBO APIs and the implict mbo variable.

from psdi.mbo import MboConstants

if purchaseprice >= 100:
  mbo.setFieldFlag("vendor",MboConstants.READONLY, True)
else:
  mbo.setFieldFlag("vendor",MboConstants.READONLY, False)
  mbo.setValue("replacementcost",purchaseprice/2)

If you use the standard MBO APIs and the implicit mbo variable, you have more control, but you must be aware of the MBO APIs. For example, if the replacementcost field is read-only, both scripts fail because the MBO framework rejects the setValue call on that attribute. A possible workaround is to use the Suppress Access Control variable binding metadata. By setting this metadata, the scripting framework can set the rc variable value to the replacementcost whether it is read-only or not. However, this workaround works only if the script code uses the variable binding. For scripts that use the MBO APIs, the script code must use the MboConstants setting to achieve the same result.

from psdi.mbo import MboConstants
..
mbo.setValue("replacementcost",purchaseprice/2, MboConstants.NOACCESSCHECK)

Another use case is to make the calculated field that is created for the asset sparepart total quantity calculation near real-time. For example, if you change the quantities of the related spare parts, you see the calculated field sparepartqty value change in near real-time. To achieve this outcome, you need to create a script and attribute launchpoint for the quantity attribute for the sparepart object with the Action event. The explicit variable binding is shown in the following table:

Table 1.
Variable name	Variable type	Binding
`sptqt`	INOUT	`&owner&.sparepartqty`

The variable sptqt is bound to the owner’s asset MBO sparepartqty attribute. Set the sptqt variable with no access check because it is marked as read-only by the original object launch point script when the asset MBO is initialized. The variable quantity is implicitly injected in the script because that is the attribute on which the script is listening. The following script is an example:

sptqt=sptqt+quantity-quantity_previous

The use of the implicit variable quantity_previous represents the value of the quantity attribute before the modification, which is the value at the initialization of the sparepart MBO. The variable quantity holds the current modified value of the quantity attribute.

The script and the object launch point script provide a complete calculated field logic.