In any application the data structures and the processes to synchronize the production data are the foundation of the functionality. Within an Agentry application project there are three definition types intended to define data stored on the Client: objects, complex tables and data tables. All three define the data for the application and also include components for synchronizing data with the back end system.
Objects exist at the module level and complex and data tables are defined at the application level. Complex tables and data tables are defined to store lists of records on the Client and normally contain values displayed to the users in lists or other controls from which they can make selections. Objects store the production data for modules and normally encapsulate some business entity.
While objects, complex tables and data tables are the main data definitions, there are others related to the storage and synchronization of data on the Client. The first of these are object properties. An object property defines a single piece of data for the parent object. Note that there are also transaction properties, which are similar to object properties but are defined within a transaction. The discussion of properties here will focus on object properties.
Other definitions related to production data are those defined to synchronize the data. The primary definition for data synchronization is the step definition. A step defines a piece of processing to be performed by the Agentry Server with a specific back end system. Steps are used by other definitions that are processed during data synchronization. This allows for reusability as well as the multi-system support provided by Agentry. Steps are defined to synchronize data stored in objects and transactions.
The synchronization process for complex and data tables is defined within the definitions themselves. Both complex tables and data tables contain components responsible for the downstream, or back end-to-client data synchronization.