Extender 2013 Feature of the Day: Extender Table Changes
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
What table changes were made?
With all the new features that have been added to Extender 2013, the Extender tables had to change. Many of the tables are new with Extender 2013. While theory behind many of them are the same as previous releases of Extender, the actual SQL name of the tables are different as well as the structure of them is a little different.
With Extender 2010, most data records were tracked based on 3 fields, PT_Window_ID, PT_UD_Key, and PT_UD_Number. With Extender 2013, it is a little easier to track the data as it is based on two fields, Extender_Record_ID and Field_ID. Each resource you create in Extender will get a Record_ID attached to it and then the fields on that resource have a Field_ID attached to them.
With this, the data will no longer be linked based on the Key Fields setup on the resource. If the Keys need to be changed, they can be without affecting the data that has been entered into the system.
Nicole,
From everything I can tell, Extender gets the next record id value by querying the table, such as EXT01100, to get the last value and then increments it by 1. Is that basically how it works?
You are correct in that Extender will look to the table for the largest value and add 1.
Nicole
Question regarding multiple companies. We have two companies and are testing the extender upgrade. We have found that the field_id is different for the same information. Example: field_id is 236 on ext01101 for one company and field_id is 218 on ext01101 for second company. Same extender window information.
Why would this inconsistency occur?
Will,
In Extender 2010 and previous, field Ids were assigned 1,2,3 etc per window.
In Extender 2013+, they are assigned as they are created starting from 100.
So if I make WindowA and create 5 fields, they are 100 to 104.
When you run the upgrade process from 2010 to the new version, Extender converts them as it processes the Windows so if one company is different by having more windows, they would end up with differences in the window field ids.
This won’t matter to Extender itself, but integrating applications might have an issue with that difference – that is why we would recommend that you use the Extender Views window in Extender to create SQL Views of your Extender Windows. Now the view hides the field id value and all the caller sees is “My Field 1” , “My Field 2” etc and would all be the same from a SQL point of view.