DeveloperDan - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 8:41 AM:
My company (an adhesive film manufacturer) is evaluating software for new product development. I've installed Innovator and added the demo database. I'm initially using the PLM portion of the program. I would expect to be able to create custom forms to integrate into the application but I can't figure out how. As a .Net developer with sql skills I'm used to adding text boxes, combo boxes, check boxes etc. which are in some way bound to database fields, look-up tables or data objects. We have many existing applications and I need to know how to integrate Innovator with these. We use Sql Server already. Can I write stored procedures to be used in Innovator? I'd also like be able to add hyperlinks from Innovator to our existing web pages. Any guidance would be appreciated as customization is critical in our choice of software. Thanks in advance.
PeterSchroer - Wednesday, January 27, 2010 1:39 PM:
Dan,
Couple of thoughts that might help you.
Yes you can write stored procedures. You can add business logic in the Client, the Server and the Database. I recommend writing these triggers and stored procedures within the Aras solution studio... easier to package and support them.
For integrating Aras with existing applications, I recommend Federation http://www.aras.comhttp://www.aras.com/Community/wikis/kb/how-to-use-federation.aspx Open the Administration menu, create new ItemTypes and Forms that model the data stored in the exisitng applications, and then add Server OnGet Methods to populate the Forms for the user. Once you are in a server method you can easily use SQL, XML web services, or just about any programmatic technique for fetching data from your other applications. I've implemented federation at several customer sites, done well, it gives the end-user the illusion that all the data is stored natively in Aras. One user interface, data items linked together etc, but the Aras Innovator DB does not store all the data. I assume you have already experimented with one of the built-in ItemTypes, such as Supplier. Try opening the Form for Supplier and get a feel for adding fields, layout etc. Changing schema and form layouts in Innovator should be significantly easier than working in Visual Studio.
Since the Innovator Form definition is rendered into HTML, you have alot of flexibility with layout and adding client-side scripting (using JS). I've added hyperlinks to forms for example - one technique is to use a String property to hold the hyperlink value, and then add an html field on you Form that contains an Image and a small piece of script to launch the URL. For example, placing this code into an HTML field, will embed it into the Form definntion at run-time, giving your users a clickable hyperlink.
<script>
function openSite() {
if (document.forms[0].website_address.value=="") return;
var url =document.forms[0].website_address.value;
if (url.indexOf('http') ==-1) url = 'http://' + url;
var win = window.open(url);
}
</script>
<a href="BLOCKED SCRIPTopenSite();">
<img src='../images/icons/16x16/16x16_searches.gif' border=0 alt="Open Web Page"></a>
Drop me an email if you want to see a demo of what this looks like.
Peter
CycleOp - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 5:56 AM:
Peter Hi,
There seem to a problem with the line: <a href="BLOCKED SCRIPTopenSite();">
Seems to me BLOCKED SCRIPT was put there by mistake. Can you show the right code ?
Sagi Tikotski
CycleOp
Ronan - Thursday, October 14, 2010 1:56 PM:
Sagi,
Scripts in posts are automatically removed for security reasons.
Peter probably meant (remove the pipes) "j|a|v|a|s|c|r|i|p|t|:". This is the standard way to add javascript to a "a" html element, see this article for example.
