Field properties

You can edit the properties of a field by clicking its name in the Field List panel of the Data Modeler. When you click a field's name, the field's properties appear in the Data Modeler's Property panel.

The first property is the Section property. This is a read-only property. Section names are used to organize the fields that can be accessed in records created from a business object. When you are adding a field directly to a business object, it will always be part of a section named General. Other kinds of sections are discussed in "Record organization".

The value of the Field Type property determines the type of data that the field will hold. There is a summary of the possible values for Field Type in Field data types.

Depending on the value selected for Field Type, additional properties may appear. You can find a description of the specific properties for different data types along with their descriptions in Field data types.

If you are adding a new field, you can change the values of Field Type and Name. If you are editing an existing field, these properties are read-only and cannot be changed.

The Description and Purpose properties should contain whatever information you think will help people understand what will be stored in the field and what the field is for. If you are adding a new field, you can edit the Description and Purpose properties in the normal way. If you are editing the properties of an existing field, you can still edit the Description and Purpose properties, but the procedure for editing them is unusual.

When you are editing the properties of a field, the Description and Purpose properties are grayed out. You cannot edit them directly. What you can do is first click the Save Field action in the Data Modeler to ensure that any changes you have made to properties are not lost. Next, click the label of the Description property. The label of the Description property is a hyperlink. Clicking it causes a Field Description form to appear at the bottom of the Property panel under the properties.

The Field Description form contains the same information as the corresponding properties of the field. You can edit the values of the Description and Purpose properties in this form. When you click this form's Ok action, the form disappears and the Description and Purpose properties of the field are updated.

There is a reason for this unusual procedure for editing a field's Description and Purpose properties. These properties are intended to explain how the field should be used in business objects. They are not intended to explain how the field is used in a particular business object. Because the information is not specific to any business object, all fields with the same name have the same values for Description and Purpose. If you change a field's Description or Purpose, the change will be visible in the properties of the field in every business object that uses it.

The check box labeled Required determines how this field is treated when it appears in a form. If the Required check box is checked, a value for the field must be specified. If a value for a required field is not specified in a form, the contents of the form will not be accepted.

There are a few circumstances in which the platform supplies the initial value for a field in a new record by copying the value of a like-named field from an existing record. For example, if a field has no default value and the name of the field is the same as a name of a field in the triPeople business object, the initial value for the field comes from the triPeople business object that describes the person who is logged in. Other circumstances related to hierarchy modules are described in "Hierarchies".

This mechanism for automatically providing the initial value of a new field is called auto-populate. If you want to prevent a field from being auto-populated, check the check box labeled Do Not Auto Populate. It is a good practice to check this check box unless you specifically want a field to be auto-populated.

The check box labeled Result Column establishes a default for whether or not the field will be used in smart sections that refer to this business object. Smart sections of a business object are discussed in "Record organization". The Result Column check box also determines whether this field will be available for constructing a dynamic list. For information on dynamic lists, see "List creation". If this check box is checked, the default is that this field will be used in smart sections that refer to this business object; otherwise not.

If the Result Column check box is checked, another property appears. This property is labeled Column Sequence. The number in this field is used to determine the default order in which fields appear in smart sections that refer to this business object.

The check box labeled Mobile Field is useful for mobile applications that run with clients that have a small display, such as a phone or PDA. The setting of this check box determines whether the field is included in a smaller view of the records created from this business object.

If the Mobile Field check box is checked, another property appears immediately under it. This field is labeled Mobile Field Seq. The number that appears in this field will determine the default order of fields in the smaller view.

If the Staging Table Field property is checked, the field is included in the business object's staging table. Changes to this property after a staging table is created are not reflected in the staging table until the business object is republished. By default the Staging Table Field property is not checked. The Staging Table Field property is supported in the following field types: Boolean, Business Object, Classification, Color, Date, Date and Time, Duration, List, Locator, Number, Password, Text, Time, UOM, Url. The Staging Table Field is checked for all Required fields of these types. Only fields in the General section are supported to be staging table fields. Fields in a smart section can be added to the staging table.

The Staging Table Key property identifies fields to be used as keys to find a record via Upsert or Update. The Insert action does not use the Staging Table Key property. By default, the Staging Table Key property is not checked. It can be selected only when the Staging Table Field property is selected. The Staging Table Key property is supported in the following field types: Boolean, Business Object, Classification, Color, Date, Date and Time, Duration, List, Locator, Number, Password, Text, Time, UOM, Url.

IBM® Maximo® Real Estate and Facilities DataConnect for Fact Tables uses staging tables. Read more about DataConnect for Fact Tables in Application Building for the IBM Maximo Real Estate and Facilities: Data Management.

When the Do Audit property is checked, changes in value for this field are stored in audit tables. If the business object's Audit Interactive Data property is selected and a field's Do Audit property is not checked, audit data for the field are not stored in audit tables.

Changing the Display Mask property in UOM List fields with any value other than Currency or in Number fields changes the decimals shown to the user but does not change the value in the database. The formatting in a Number field takes precedence over UOM formatting when displaying Number fields in query reports or forms. If a value has more digits to the right of the decimal place than shown in the Display Mask property, the platform uses Round Half Up to round the value in the display.

When the Read Only property is selected, the user cannot change the value for this field.