Understanding Your Data Model › Using Relations › Use of For Text for a Parts Assembly

Use of For Text for a Parts Assembly

This example is intended to show the use of For text to distinguish between different entries of the same field on a single file. This example includes the use of Sharing.

A Company is defined as follows:

FIL   Company REF     Known by        FLD     Customer code   CDE

FIL  Company REF     Has             FLD     Customer name   TXT

FIL    Division        REF     Owned by        FIL     Company         REF

FIL  Division        REF     Known by        FLD     Division code   CDE

FIL  Division        REF     Has             FLD     Division name   TXT

And each Company is split into divisions, thus a Division is defined as follows:

FIL  Division        REF     Owned by        FIL     Company         REF

FIL  Division        REF     Known by        FLD     Division code   CDE

FIL  Division        REF     Has             FLD     Division name   TXT

Let us now introduce the products handled by the company and say that each Division produces different products or parts. This means that a Part is to be defined as follows:

FIL     Part    REF     Owned by        FIL     Division                REF

FIL  Part    REF     Known by        FLD     Part code                       CDE

FIL  Part    REF     Has             FLD     Part name                       TXT

The above relations result in the following entries. Note that Part has both Company code and Division code in its key:

The basic description of an Assembly includes two separate references to a Part, one as Resulting Part and one as Component Part. You can distinguish between the two by use of the For text:

FIL        Assembly        REF     Owned by        FIL     Part            REF

       For: Resulting                  Sharing: *ALL

FIL  Assembly        REF     Owned by        FIL     Part                    REF

       For: Component                  Sharing: *ALL

FIL  Assembly        REF     Has             FLD     Assembly qty            QTY

After the first instance of the Part code field on the Part file, the For text will be prefixed to each additional instance to create a unique entry name.

As a further consideration, you need to decide whether the Resulting parts and the Component parts belong to the same Division and Company. Whether they do or not is indicated by the value specified for the Sharing field. As a default, sharing is assumed. In this instance, it will be assumed that the Company and Division for both Component and Resulting parts is the same. The Component part must be from the same Company and Division as the resulting part. This means any fields that would be duplicated by the resolution of both Owned by relations will not actually be repeated.

The following entries would result:

Thus, the additional instances of Company code and Division code that may arise from the second Owned by relation have been suppressed.

If the Component belongs to different divisions and companies than the "Resulting" part, we would specify that there is no sharing of common keys; that is, specify a value of *NONE for the Sharing field. This causes any fields, whose presence would be duplicated on the generated file by the resolution of both of the Owned by relations, to be repeated with different names.

FIL       Assembly        REF     Owned by        FIL     Part            REF

       For: Resulting                  Sharing: *NONE

FIL Assembly        REF     Owned by        FIL     Part                    REF

       For: Component                  Sharing: *NONE

FIL Assembly        REF     Has             FLD     Assembly qty            QTY

This would result in the separate entries for the Resulting Company code, the Resulting Division code, and Resulting Part code, as follows:

A third variation may be the case where components can be from divisions different than those of the resulting assembly but the resulting assembly and component must be for the same company. In this case you would specify that there is sharing only of Company. This causes the duplicate reference to the Company code to be dropped.

FIL    Assembly        REF     Owned by        FIL     Part            REF

       For: Resulting                  Sharing: Company

FIL       Assembly        REF     Owned by        FIL     Part                    REF

       For: Component                  Sharing: Company

FIL       Assembly        REF     Has             FIL     Assembly qty            QTY

This would result in the following entries: