Yes, exactly.
On Jul 13, 2006, at 12:09 AM, Marcel wrote:
I think I see what you mean: we would automatically pull the record
out of the collection and display it separately. It could end up
being part of more than one collection. That would give a much more
sophisticated view of the data. Good idea. I was stuck in "one
record visible per collection" mode.
Andrus Adamchik wrote:
I am going offline for tonight. I'll read the rest of your comment
tomorrow. Let me answer this one though.
On Jul 12, 2006, at 11:30 PM, Marcel wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean by uniquing in this context. Checking
to see if an object (say, a given Artist) is anywhere in the
diagram isn't suitable.
I think it is.
Consider Dept and Employee tables, where Dept has n employees and
1 boss, all drawn from the Employee table. When I expand the
employees relationship, I get a collection of Employee objects
including the boss. When I expand the boss relationship, I don't
want to point to the same visual part (the collection of
Employees) even though the boss is in it.
I don't see a problem with this scenario. Collection and its
elements can be made separate things visually (and this is what I
was trying to say in the previous message). I guess I may need to
draw a picture in Photoshop or something to better illustrate what
I'm saying. When you expand the boss relationship you point to
another employee (who is the boss). Employee, not the collection
of employees.
The only alternative I can see to the present setup (which just
expands any relationship the user asks to see expanded, but won't
expand the same relationship twice) is to refuse to expand
relationships which have already been expanded from the other end
(ie if the Dept -> Employee relationship has already been
expanded, clicking on the Dept relationship in the employee table
does nothing).
It can do something visual, such as change the color of the
relationship arrow and the outline of the target object selected.
But there is no reason to refuse this: if that's what the user
wants to see, why not let them?
Because it would incorrectly represent the graph. It will show
multiple nodes where there is one. Besides we are not preventing
the user from seeing the node he wants to see. We are just
pointing him to the right place, saying "see, it is already opened".
Andrus
