In the preceding chapter we got a rough idea of how you create an InfoView. Here, we'll see what you do with it once it has been created.

The basic operations are actually quite simple:

Let's start by creating the most basic but nonetheless functional InfoView to demonstrate at least some of the above. For the following example, we'll be basing our InfoView on the Contacts table, but any table would do just fine.

First, we are assuming that a new InfoView record has been created in the InfoView sub-grid under the Contacts table (as described in the previous chapter). Let's open the new blank InfoView form by double-clicking its record, and let's place it wherever it won't be obstructed by the FieldView form.

To create a minimally useful InfoView, we must place some fields on it. Placing a field on an InfoView form is an easy-to-follow 14-step process. Just kidding. It's a one-step process, of course. Drag the field you want to place onto the InfoView and drop it roughly where you want it. That's all! You can also double-click the field in the Fields grid – and it will be added to the bottom of whatever may already be in the InfoView. Whichever way you prefer, it's a snap. As soon as you place the first field on the InfoView (let's start with the Contacts table's ID field just to follow some sequence), the InfoView starts to look like... well, like a real InfoView:

You got the DataNav bar at the top plus whatever Control happened to correspond to the field you just added to the form, possibly accompanied by a Caption label.

Let's add the rest of the fields, or at least some of them to keep the ID field company. Drag-and-drop or double-click CreationDate, LastModificationDate, Author, Subject, Category, and whatever else you want: the Controls get added to the form, so it starts to look even more like "the real thing":

At its very simplest, that's it! We have just created a perfectly usable, albeit extremely primitive InfoView. We can save it at any time by clicking the Save InfoView Form button – it will be enabled for InfoViews that have been modified and thus need saving.

Note that the Author edit box doesn't look the same in Designer and Alventis: in the former, it simply displays the User ID, while in the latter, it displays the corresponding User Name. All other items look and work the same in both applications.

The above procedure for "implementing" fields on an InfoView form may be simple and effective, but there's one other way we'd like to mention before we move on to the fun stuff. You can place all fields of a table onto an InfoView in one shot by dragging the table itself onto the InfoView. Instead of dragging a field from the Fields grid, you'd simply drag the table from the Tables grid – and all fields get created for you one underneath the other. You can then re-arrange them whichever way you like, but this is what the next chapter is about.

An InfoView may be based on a single "main" table. This means, in particular, that you cannot freely mix tables within a single InfoView form: you can only add fields of the table the InfoView is already based on. A field from some other table will not be accepted. Relational InfoViews present all sorts of exceptions to the above rule, but we'll deal with Relationality later.