Developing for Entities

Within the Aptify system, all of the data that an organization tracks is associated with at least one service. Services contain data of a specific type, such as Company data, Employee data, Order data, and so forth. These services then provide a wealth of functions that allow the user to effectively manipulate different types of data. Each service provides a combination of standard, application-wide functions as well as functions that only relate to that type of data.

The Entities service is an essential administrator and developer tool used to manage all aspects of every service in the Aptify system. The Entities service is used to create and modify the metadata associated with each service in the system. This service is used to create and edit all other services within the Aptify system. The most important benefit provided by the Entities service is that it allows almost all Aptify metadata development to occur from the Aptify front-end interface. All database objects (such as SQL stored procedures, triggers, and table schemas) and front-end configurations (such as organization-specific graphical user interfaces, Aptify wizard consignments, or report handling) may be administered from the Entities service. Each Entities record corresponds to a top-level service (which is visible in the Folder List) or to a sub-type (which appears as a tab within a parent service and is not visible in the Folder List).

Each entity in Aptify utilizes the functionality of the Generic Entity (GE). A developer can also modify system behavior for a particular entity by writing an entity object and associating this object with the entity's Entities record. See Developing Entity Plug-in Objects for information on the GE and entity objects.

This topic contains the following sub-topics that provide information about the use of entities in the Motor Loaner Sample Application:

• Creating the Rental Agreements Entity Sample Application Example
• Creating the CustomerPhone Sub-Type Entity Sample Application Example
• Sample Application Security Model

Related Topics

• Creating Entities
• Note Concerning Entity Cloning and Templates
• Creating a New Entity
• Creating Multiple Base Tables
• Creating Sub-Type Entities
• Defining the Sort Order for Sub-Type Listings
• Defining Entity Fields
• General Steps for Creating a Field
• Creating a Field of a Specific Type
• About the Supported SQL Data Types
• Managing Embedded Database Objects