Decisions for GUI

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A decision in the USoft platform is a generic programmatic construct used at many levels, for example, in scripting Rules Engine behavior.

The  concept is covered in the USoft Definer Help.

But decisions also play a key role when you script GUI behavior of USoft client-server applications. This help topic gives examples of this: decisions that are called from GUIs built with USoft Windows Designer.

collapseExample 1: Screen behavior based on data

This single-record info window for "Persons" contains a tab control. This control has 2 tab pages. Each page has with separate fields to fill out, depending on whether the person is male or female.

A decision is used to determine (for the person currently viewed) which tab page must be made sensitive.

The decision is called in the Pre-Record-Entry property of the info window. It passes the value currently found in the Gender field:

ActionDecision( TAB_PAGE_BY_GENDER, query.gender() )

 

You may want to make this same call also from the Post-change property of the Gender field.

The decision itself looks like this:

(Decision SQL:)

:1 = 'M'

 

(Yes Action:)

Tab_1.ControlSetActiveTab(  'Page 1' )

 

(No Action:)

Tab_1.ControlSetActiveTab(  'Page 2' )
collapseExample 2: Report of table data in current window

A number of different window classes share a common "Report" button. If the button is pressed, a data report is written to a file. The file has a variable name that identifies the object reported on. That name is taken from the current info window.

This decision is called from a "Report" button.  The button has its Action property set to:

ActionDecision( MAKE_REPORT )

 

The decision itself looks like this:

(Decision SQL:)

SELECT        RulesEngine.GetProperty('tempdir') || '\ClipBoard_' || :"CurrentInfoBox" || '.xml'

WHERE        NOT :"CurrentInfoBox"  IS NULL

 

(Yes Action:)

 DataReport( :1 )

 

(No Action:)

ActionDoNothing()