New feature in CAM - setAssociation() =?UTF-8?Q?=3F?=

Team,

I think I've encountered a good new potential feature.

The genesis for this is within data - there are primary and foreign keys - and these are not explicitly called out anywhere in the XML itself - they are just tacitly in there - i.e. customer has customer_number, orders with customer_number and so on.

The idea here is to provide an automated way of linking these associations - a shorthand method. Also - by making them rules - good things happen as side effects - I can filter on those - show a "Key" symbol in the editor and so on.

This then also allows CAM templates to show semantic linkage - across and between parts in an XML exchange - using a simple and intuitive rule method e.g. setAssociation(Xpath)

On any element in a CAM template - essentially you are adding a rule hint the value in the Xpath tells you what field you are pointing to - so can be anything you want in the XML structure - customerId, SSN, @id, whatever - while the specific value in that thing is then the cross-reference value.

This type of rule is different from the strict validation rules we've had up until now as its sole purpose is to show semantic relationships. It is more akin to the KeyRef mechanisms in XSD Schema - and the RDF linked data ideas.

Your thoughts appreciated.

DW

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