Transaction and Fetch Properties

A transaction property defines a value to be captured by a transaction. Definable behaviors include the initial value for the property, the object property or table record field it targets, as well as data-related behaviors. These include minimum and maximum values, a special value, and similar settings. These last behaviors will vary depending on the data type of the property.

A fetch property defines data to be captured on the Agentry Client for use during fetch processing by the Agentry Server. A fetch that contains properties is normally displayed in a screen set to allow the user to enter the desired values. The steps of the fetch then have access to these property values for use during synchronization. The fetch properties themselves define the data types of the values, and the initialization values when the fetch is instantiated.

Both transaction and fetch properties contain attributes related to initialization. These attributes are a part of all transaction and fetch property definitions regardless of the property data type. These attributes are in addition to the data type specific attributes.

For both a fetch and a transaction property, the purpose is to capture data on the Client. How this data is used depends on the property’s parent. A transaction property’s value will be copied to the object property it targets when the transaction is applied. This value will then also be available to the steps used by the transaction during synchronization and, depending on the defined processing, will likely be updated to the back end system.

A fetch property will be stored with the fetch and sent to the Agentry Server during synchronization. This will make the value available to all steps run by the fetch. However, the fetch property value will not affect the object property, as fetch properties do not modify object instances on the Client.

Transaction and Fetch Property Attributes

The following list of attributes are specific to properties defined for a transaction or fetch. These attributes are common to all properties regardless of data type:
  • Object Property: This attribute specifies the object property targeted by the transaction or fetch property. This value may be used for initialization. For a transaction, this is also the object property the transaction property will set when the transaction is applied.
  • Initial Value: This attribute specifies the data source to initialize the property. This may be the object property targeted by the transaction or fetch property, the property of a different object not targeted by the fetch or transaction, a constant value, or via a rule. When a rule is used, the rule may be evaluated before or after data entry.
  • Constant: This attribute is enabled only when Initial Value is set to “Constant”. The Constant attribute then contains the constant value to which the property will be initialized whenever the parent transaction or fetch is instantiated on the Client. This may be left blank for many property data types to initialize the property to null.
  • Rule: This attribute is enabled only when the Initial Value attribute is set to either “Rule - before data entry” or “Rule - after data entry”. It contains a reference to the rule definition to be evaluated to initialize the property.
  • Other Property: This attribute is enabled only when the Initial Value attribute is set to “From a different object property”. Other Property then contains the target path to the object property whose value will be used to initialize the property.