rb.collection.arcSearchType

Search parameters for rb.collection.getArcs()

Elements

The rb.collection.arcSearchType struct has 24 elements:

Remarks

This structure is used to define the nodes required in a result set for the 'getArcs' method and more details on usage can be found in the documentation for that method.

The only required parameter in this structure is 'targetType'. This is because each call to getArcs is constrained to return only arcs of one type (items, nodes or contact records).

If only targetType is specified then getArcs will return all arcs stored for a client for which the targetType is matched, regardless of the type of the arc or the entity at the other end.

Starting point and direction

rb.collection.getArcs 'Starting from entity X find all arcs that have X on the (left/right) hand end and return all arcs that connect with entities of type T, (optionally) along with those entities.

X is usually specified , but there are cases where you want to find all arcs of a certain type and so the starting point can be ommitted.

Consider the following exampledata-set:

           ARC1
Xcontact ----+------------> Z1item
     | ARC2
     +------------> Z2item
     | ARC3
     +------------> Z3contact
     | ARC4
     +-----------\ 
     ARC5       > Z4cat node
     +-----------/
     | ARC6
     +------------> Z5item
     | ARC7
     Ycontact ----+------------> Z6contact

In this example there are two enties on the left hand side of a collection of arcs (X and Y). The Right hand elements, X, comprise items, nodes and contacts. The semantic meaning of these arcs are determined by the application, but depending on that application it may be useful to find 'all items on the right associated with entity X'.

At other times it may be more useful to ask 'all the left-hand elements connected to arcs that lead to Z⁴ on the right'.

Thus the getArcs query allow the application designer to choose a starting point (X,Y,Zⁱ) and a direction (left->right or right->left).

Each query can only search for elements to of a particular type (contact, item or node).

No starting point

It is anticpated that most queries will have a defined starting point - for example find all arcs that have as their left-point [contact-record,"Fred Bloggs"] and which have type 'my-application'

There are other instances where the application may need all arcs of a specific type without specifying a single start point. For these cases the start point is optional.

Example queries

allData - controlling the amount of information returned

allData acts in a similar way to the comparable search fields in the contact and catalogue templates - it determines the amount of data returned to the client. There are two main reasons for providing this control:

• For speed (1). The underlying data in the worst case for reading item and stock data from an item record will involve querying 5 tables. If only the basic item data is required this can be reduced to 3 tables reducing load on the database and improving application response times.
• For speed (2). Iterator data is returned to the presentation engine in chunks that have a maximum size. By reducing the data size more records can be squeezed into that response and less responses are required.

For the collection template the effect of the 'allData' field depends on the type of the underlying entity being returned as the target:

^* memberOf is a structure added to the member record that records the communities to which a contact record belongs. Note¹ the memberOf data is stored as a JavaScript object where each property is the contact ID of the community, and the value is 1. Note² the memberOf structure does not include the OD of the contact itself!

Note that each of these sets is distinct - to get a combination of these data sets simply add the values together. To get all possible data set allData to 15 (1+2+4+8).