Diagramming Entity Relationships › Defining Employee and Its Attributes › Defining the Employee Entity

Defining the Employee Entity

The next step in defining the Employee entity is to add triples for Employee to inherit a user interface from class library entities.

1. Change the Object Browser to show entities again, and click Refresh.
2. Drag the Employee entity from the Object Browser to the body of the Model Editor. The Model Editor should look like this:

   

3. Add the following triple:

   Employee is a OBASE/User Maintained Entity

   This inheritance triple provides Employee with user interface functionality from User Maintained Entity in the OBASE class library.

4. Refresh the Object Browser, and then expand the Employee entity until the Object Browser looks similar to the following example.

   

   Notice that Employee inherited the function Maintenance Suite, which has the functions Change User Interface, Create User Interface, Delete User Interface, and Maintenance UI scoped to it, each of which scopes a panel object. These four functions display panels on which end users can add, change, and delete Employee data. You will see how the functions interact when you generate and build the Employee entity at the end of this chapter. (You will not use the two print functions in this tutorial.)

5. Add the following triple:

   Employee is a OBASE/Referenced Entity

   This gives Employee functionality that enables end users to select from a list of employees to assign to a task. This is covered in more detail in the following section.

The inheritance triples you created in the previous steps gave the Employee entity the following:

• Functions that let you add, change, and delete employees
• Ability to access a list of employees from the panel that lists tasks