A generic lookup table for various small LOVs

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I am designing a page which has a large number of small lists of values./combo boxes I have fields Equipment Selection (Insert, Assembly Fixture, etc), Process Flow (Welding, Paining, Coating, etc) and so on. A user needs to be able to add values to the LOVs to meet the business needs. One option is to create a separate entity for each such field and then create an association with the parent entity. This will, on my books, complicate the data model with a very large number of entities with just one field in it. Instead I would like to create one entity with two fields: purpose (e.g. Equipment Selection, Process Flow) and meaning (Insert, Assembly Fixture, Welding, Paining, Coating, etc). The problem is how to create an association from my 'primary' entity to this generic lookup entity. If I create a relationship to represent Equipment Selection, then it should not be able to select values related to Process Flow. If such association is not possible to record in the data model, then how do I create a UI drop down element to select only the values specific for this field. P.S. This is a foreign key relationship where one value is fixed.
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1 answers
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Hi Miroslav,

Your general setup of Functional Entities linked to (let's call it an) LOV-Entity is a good way to start.
If your list of purposes doesn't change that much, a good approach would be to create an Enumeration value for each of the purposes, which you add to your LOV-Entity and set this value when creating a new entry.

In the selection fields, you can then easily add an XPath constraint for Selectable Objects based on the Enumeration value that you need (i.e. [PurposeType = ENUM_PurposeType.EquipmentSelection]), and still use standard reference selectors etc.

 

 

Good luck!

Kind regards,
Jeffrey

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