Features of View Pages

• Ability to simultaneously display information from two related data sources (having a one-to-many relationship) in a single page

• Easy display of information from lookup tables (item-description pattern) by defining the appropriate query sources

• Ability to display computed columns or attributes.  The attribute defined in the "name" attribute is passed to the custom function in $source parameter and also the attributes of the selected row are exposed to the function in a hash array named $record.  The developer may also use the makelink function to generate links in the computed field.

• Layout control in the <top> section using the <hr> and <vr> tags.  These tags are translated into horizontal and vertical separators respectively and are useful when there is a lot of information to show in a page.

• Automatic pagination of the rows and inclusion of the navigation facility in multi-row view pages

• Ability to filter the page's data source based on the criteria passed from a search page

• Allowing the user to sort the rows based on any of the columns (<field> tags) in ascending or descending orders and remembering the user's preferred sort order across the session.

Features of Insert and Edit Pages

• Supporting multi-line text, password, constant and combo inputs

• Ability to simultaneously input information for two tables having a one-to-many relationship (in insert pages)

• Ability to use an auxiliary data retrieving query (similar to the queries used in view pages) to display meaningful information to the user amid the data entry fields in the forms.

• Ability to use a seed query to retrieve seed values for data entry fields (type="seed")

• Automatic validation of user input upon submission of the form

• Properly reporting the error messages generated by the built-in form verification routine or returned from onload and onsubmit functions

• Ability to use combo boxes for inputting foreign key attributes, even in the body of the form

• Supporting various modifiers for the <field> tag.  Examples are hidden and noinsert attributes.

• Layout control in the header of the form using <hr> and <vr> tags.

• Using transactions when modifying the database.  If any of the queries fails or the onsubmit function cancels the operation, the transaction is rolled back.

• Ability to update external files which are used as the source of the combo inputs

Features of Search Pages

• Ability to search in the values of attributes in exact, partial and range modes

• Ability to search in every attribute that is included in the underlying search query, no matter if it is shown in the search results or not.

• Ability to use DISTINCT or UNIQUE queries to allow the user perform the search based on the attributes of the related rows in other tables

Features of Delete Pages

• Ability to simultaneously remove related rows from two tables having a one-to-many relationship (The received parameter is treated as the primary key for the "one" side and the foreign key for the "many" side.)

• Supporting referential integrity constraints in the definition of the page.  If removal of the rows results in violation of the constraints, the delete operation is aborted.

• Supporting onload and onsubmit functions, allowing the developer to implement further checks to verify the validity of the delete operation (in onload) or execute supplementary queries to complement the delete operation (in onsubmit).

• Ability to archive the rows in archive tables before removal.