Creating Embedded Objects

Embedded objects present fields from a related entity as if those fields were a part of the current entity. From a user perspective, all of the fields on the form appear to be stored in the same service when they may actually represent fields from other services.

An organization may want to use embedded links to provide a centralized user form for entering a variety of fields, while storing related information in separate entities. Also, developers will find that working with embedded links will reduce code complexity; Aptify creates an embedded Generic Entity (GE) object within the current entity that simplifies set and get operations on records in linked entities. See Understanding the Embedded Object Model for more information on developer benefits.

Embedded objects are also suitable for modeling "Is-A" types of relationships. For example, a passenger car "is a" vehicle, and a commercial truck is also a vehicle. In this case, a common "vehicles" entity can be embedded into a Cars entity and a Trucks entity.

Consider the following example that illustrates one possible use of an embedded link:

An organization wants to create an application to track the characteristics of various types of vehicles, including passenger cars and commercial trucks. To normalize the data, the organization determines that it wants a separate "Vehicles" service that stores general information common to all vehicles, such as Make, Model, Color, Year, and engine specifications.

In addition, the organization needs a "Passenger Vehicles" service to track passenger cars (and the characteristics unique to these vehicles, such as number of passengers and number of doors) and a "Commercial Vehicles" service to track commercial trucks (and the characteristics unique to these vehicles, such as hauling capacity).

Both the Passenger Vehicles service and the Commercial Vehicles service will have an embedded link to the common Vehicles service. The fields from the Vehicles service will appear as if they are part of the other two services.

This section contains the following topics:

• Important Notes Concerning Embedded Objects
• Creating Non-Shared Embedded Objects
• Designing and Creating Shared Embedded Objects