Designing the Procedure Logic › Build Action Diagrams › Copy With Substitution to Build an Action Diagram

Copy With Substitution to Build an Action Diagram

Copy with Substitution lets you do the following tasks:

• Select an existing action block that references a single entity type
• Replace the reference to that entity type and its attributes with another entity type
• Create a new action block

For example, consider an action block named Add Employee. Its logic may be quite similar to an existing action block, Add Customer. Using copy with substitution, the designer can request that an Add Employee action block be built from Add Customer, substituting references to Customer with references to Employee. You may use it on procedure steps or action blocks.

Copy with Substitution is presented as an alternative only when both of these situations occur:

• The action block to be copied references entities of only one type.
• Only those relationships that are involved with the entity type are referenced in the action block.

Copy with Substitution has to make assumptions about the use of attributes. For this reason, the designer should check that the action block produced by Copy with Substitution really does what it should.

Copy with Substitution for an online procedure step action block invokes the Auto Layout option of the Screen Design tool. The result is both the action diagram and the screen for the procedure step.