Hello All,
I think Windchill really needs a UI Tool for Mapping Alias Attributes. As Administrators, having users need to put in a string like this
theChangeable2@wt.change2.ChangeRecord2~theChangeActivity2^wt.change2.WTChangeActivity2~theChangeActivity2@wt.change2.IncludedIn2~theChangeOrder2^wt.change2.WTChangeOrder2~theChangeOrder2@wt.change2.AddressedBy2~theChangeRequest2^wt.change2.WTChangeRequest2~number
(Yes that is a valid one)
Inside a single line attribute one quarter of the screen in Type and Attribute management is a difficult task. Even outside of the hard part of coming up with the mapping, we are expecting customers to have intimate knowledge of the DB, needing to find out how everything to each other, and then to follow our syntax for mapping.
The thing is, we have Query Builder already, which is an interface for linking tables in a graphical way, so we should leverage this again here so that customers can start plugging in the type where the attribute exists, and be able to see the links to the tables that might get them this happy path, and then generate it for them.
Benefits
- It'll get people more familiar with Query Builder if the Interface is used again, and be more comfortable using it, Query Builders Interface has so much power here.
- It'll get people more comfortable with using Alias Attributes, which have a huge untapped potential we don't see used. Reduce the amount of redundant data and duplicated data by making Alias Attributes as easy as possible.
A goal for a UI element should be typing less as possible, otherwise it's like a editor for a property file.
