I'm not sure I totally understand what Paul is talking about, but I had a comment or two and I wanted to throw an idea out there.
Paul wrote: " A right click on the feature row to view the whole feature and have a view/edit feature frame that would display the list of property names and values with nested panels for each nested feature." I like this idea. I have also thought about the issue that Paul highlighted in his example of the building address. For example, I might want to store information about the most recently recorded deed for a parcel. The problem with this is that there might be multiple items I'd like to know about the deed. (Date of Purchase, Date Recorded, Recording Number...) I had thought about solving this problem with a plug-in that would allows us to store "non-spatial" features. We could use something similar to the exixting Feature interface. The main difference would be that a non-spatial feature would not have a geometry associated with it. I think we could even display the non-spatial features using the same attribute table that we currently use for spatial features, with some changes. (You could think of a non-spatial feature collection as a table in a typical RDBMS.) This might be a simple alternative to embedding a database. I've always thought using an embedded database added an additional layer of complexity to OpenJUMP. I suppose as we consider more and more advance functionality for attribute information an embedded database option becomes more attractive. Still, it is something to consider carefully. One of the things that makes OpenJUMP so beautiful is its simplicity. :] I also wonder if we could accomodate some custom attribute table behavior by creating a "listener" system similar to what was done with the CursorTools. Plug-In developers would be able to add listeners to each attribute table. When a mouse interaction was detected we could forward an event to the registered listeners that contained a reference to the feature and attribute over which the mouse pointer was located when the event occured. In this type of system Paul could create a listener and attach it to the attribute table with the address field. In this address field he would store a primary key. When the user held the mouse pointer over this address field an event would be sent to the listener with a reference to the feature and the primary key stored in the address field. He could then display a GUI with all of the information from the address that he retrieves using the primary key stored in the event. Perhaps this is what Paul was talking about and I didn't understand completely. The Sunburned Surveyor On 6/1/07, Paul Austin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Martin, > > This case is where you have nested complex properties of an attribute > nature. For example building may have an address property that has the > attributes unit, number, street, city etc. > > I don't want to go down the whole nested feature collection route as that > can get pretty messy. In fact I would typically model these in the database > using either one-to-may or many-to-many foreign key relationships that they > really are. > > For the code table plug-in, this could be done from database layers by > following foreign key relationships that when you add the layer you could > select which ones are code tables and the columns to use from the referenced > tables. Initially I think I'd test out the concept by manually creating the > UI and config and see how it goes from there. More of a prototyping > approach. > > Paul > > > Martin Davis wrote: > Is your use case only for a property which contains a single Feature? The > general case would be to have a property which contains a FeatureCollection > (this is the full GML model, for instance). In this case the UI gets a bit > more complicated. How are you creating the Feature property? Do you need to > spatially visualize it? I'm asking these questions because while your use > case may simply be to view a single Feature property, it's nice to look a > bit further down the road at a more general design, in order to avoid > making the implementation overly specific and hard to extend. In general > supporting a hierarchical feature model introduces tons of issues all > through JUMP... which is why we didn't go there at first. The closest we > got was to support a custom object hierarchy and expose different classes > of it as separate FeatureCollections. This allowed treating the various > classes as map layers, which worked pretty well. But this was all custom > code and hard to make general-purpose. As for the code-value entry plugin, > the general concept would clearly be nice to have. Would your entry screen > only support that single attribute, or would you make a general entry panel > which showed all attributes? This was talked about a week or two ago - it > would be nice to have this as another view in the Attribute View window. > How would you supply the code-value mapping? Paul Austin wrote: > I have a data set where a property of a feature is another feature object. > In the schema it has the type Object but it's actually a Feature > instance.What I would like to do is have the following. 1. A right click > on the feature row to view the whole feature and have a view/edit feature > frame that would display the list of property names and values with nested > panels for each nested feature. 2. Use the feature display panel to > display the feature on say roll over of a complex property value Has > anyone worked on such a feature? If not I'll start writing one. Also I was > thinking that in databases you have the concept of code lookup tables, I > was thinking of a plugi-in that you can configure to display the code value > instead of the code ID and have a drop down for changing the values instead > of entering the > codes. Paul ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This > SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE > version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. 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