Alventis Designer is a second application that is part of the Alventis Professional and Enterprise Suites. You may therefore not have Designer. If this is the case, you have two choices:

•Skip all material in this and several subsequent chapters dedicated to Designer, and never find out what you are missing, or
•Read at the very least this introductory chapter to get a better idea of how Alventis works and what "makes it tick".

 

Since this is merely an Overview of what Designer is, and you are undoubtedly eager to "take the plunge" and see what it is really capable of, we'll try to keep it brief and simply outline what Designer is and does.

 

Designer does basically two "simple" things:

•Create and manipulate data tables
•Create and manipulate associated InfoView forms

 

That's all there is to it, really. Each of these tasks is, of course, what differentiates Alventis from a myriad of other data-management application.

 

GeneralOverviewFieldViewAndInfoView2

 

As has been previously mentioned in the Overall Alventis Concept chapter, all Alventis tables have several common System fields, e.g., Creation Date, Last Modification Date, Subject, Category. Everything else is up to you, and Designer allows you to add as many fields as you need to any table. You have full control over the data types (and when appropriate, sizes) of these fields. Things like strings, numbers of all kinds, Memos, and pictures – are all within reach with just a few clicks. We will show you how exactly you create tables and fields in the next chapter.

 

Once your table structure is ready, creating an InfoView for the table is a snap. This is discussed in the chapter on InfoView Editing, so you'll have to hold your breath for now. Basically, it's mostly drag-and-drop with some formatting that works exactly as if you were formatting text in an Alventis Memo, but that's all we want to say about it for the time being.

 

Any new InfoSet (a table with its "accompanying" InfoViews, remember?) becomes available to Alventis right away and in exactly the same way as any other InfoSet that may have been shipped with Alventis. There is no difference whatsoever between an InfoSet you create and any other InfoSet in the world – the ones created by us included. You can start by examining the existing InfoSets and what "stuff" they are made of, and soon you'll be on your way to creating your own, hopefully even better and more useful ones. So, without further ado, let's create some tables!