Synopsis Workbench

We have briefly discussed the Synopsis column when we were talking about the Search Results grid. We will now discover where all this Synopsis text comes from.

The Synopsis Specification of a table is basically a sequence of fields of that table interspersed with whatever text might be suitable. Let's clarify this with some examples. Imagine we are talking about the Contacts table that stores names, addresses, etc. We'll see all that information in all its glory in the appropriate InfoView of that table. The UniGrid's Search Results are unfortunately much more terse, being limited to directly displaying only the values of the always-present System fields. So, if Category and Subject are not sufficient for properly identifying the record in the Search Results, we have to resort to the Synopsis.

For a Contact record, for example, we may want to see at least some information about the person the record describes. Something like "John Smith" would be nice. Synopsis allows us to do just that (and more). Note that "John" and "Smith" were likely coming from different fields of the Contacts table (First Name and Last Name respectively).

The truth of the matter is, we can put whatever string/text or numeric fields we want here, so we can make the above Synopsis even more useful by including the person's telephone number like so: "John Smith: 321-555-3210". Whatever fits in the Synopsis column.

Let's see now how we would achieve the above.

SynopsisWorkbench1A

First, we need to select the Database and the Table whose Synopsis we want to manipulate. The two combo boxes at the top do just that.

Most of the remaining controls correspond to a single Synopsis. You can think of it as a Synopsis Record. And you can have more than one. That's right, a table can have as many Synopses as you want. You can navigate between them using the trimmed-down version of the DataNav bar.

Let's go ahead and create a new Synopsis by clicking the Plus button on the DataNav bar. A new blank Synopsis is created for us and is assigned a default Synopsis Name. Feel free to change it to something more memorable or leave it as is.

Right beneath it we find the Synopsis Specification grid. This is the "heart" of this form as this is where we arrange the fields we want in the order we like. Focus the grid by clicking on it (you may not see any change if the grid is empty). As with most grids in Alventis, create a new Spec record by hitting Insert on the keyboard. A new blank record appears in the grid. Let's start with the Field column and set it to FName (First Name). It's a combo box column, and we can only pick fields that are appropriate for a Synopsis. System fields are not listed because they already appear in the Search Results. Memo and Graphic fields can't be shown as part of a string of plain text, so they don't appear either. As soon as you pick a field, the Sample Text Box is updated to reflect your changes, so by now it may be displaying the First Name of the person from whatever happens to be your first record of the Contacts table. Hit Insert again to add a second Spec record and set its Field to Last Name. The Sample becomes something like "JohnDoe". That's not quite right, but let's add the 3rd field we want in there to get it over with: the Telephone number, so we'll add the Tel field in a similar fashion. We now end up with "JohnDoe123-555-4444" or something like that – depending on which data record of the table provides us with the data for the Sample. If the first data record doesn't suit you (maybe its relevant fields are empty), you can try to navigate to a better one using the Next/Prior buttons right next to the Sample. Let's fix our Synopsis though.

All we need to add is some punctuation to make the Synopsis more readable. We can put a single space character either in the first field's Suffix or the second field's Prefix, and the ": " pair in either of the two between the Last Name and Tel. Both Prefix and Suffix do basically the same thing: their text is inserted according to their position in the Synopsis Spec, so you can use whichever you prefer. Using both for the same field may make sense if you want to enclose its value in parenthesis or similar, e.g., "Smith (John)". You can even use either or both and leave the Field column blank if that's what you want.

Reordering Spec records is easy too: just drag them up/down with the mouse. Note that this automatically saves your changes.

If the Auto-refresh checkbox was checked, as soon as you post your changes to a Synopsis that is currently used (i.e., displayed) in an open UniGrid's Search Results, they will be automatically applied to wherever they are visible. Otherwise, you can click the Refresh button and it will refresh the Search Results. If you don't refresh them from here, they will get refreshed the next time you perform a search.

We've mentioned earlier that a table can have more than one Synopsis, but what do you do with them? If a table has more than one, you can simply select which one you want to use. You do so directly in the Search Results, but there's a trick to it. You need to Alt-click the Synopsis of the table you want to change it for. This will "let you into" the corresponding cell. You can now pick the Synopsis you want from the combo box.

You can also click the little dotted button at the right to open the Synopsis Workbench and display the currently selected Synopsis.

Your choice of which Synopsis to use is your personal business – in the very specific sense that in a multi-user setting it does not affect the other users. The Synopses themselves are shared between all users though, so be careful if editing existing ones.