Metadata tree

The metadata tree

The tree on the left of the designer is the whole configuration. Its root is the configuration itself, with its name and properties. Under it are the Common objects that belong to no single business object, then the business objects in the order they are usually read.

Business objects

Group	What it holds	Example
Constants	One value each, for the whole base	Company name, base currency
Catalogs	Lists of things, flat or hierarchical, with predefined items	Products, clients, warehouses
Documents	Events with a date and a number; posting writes them into registers	Receipt, invoice, payroll sheet
Enumerations	A closed set of values, fixed in the configuration	Order status, VAT rate kind
Data processors	Tools with forms and code, but no stored data of their own	Import, bulk update
Reports	Questions about the data, with their own composers	Stock balance, sales by month
Charts of characteristic types	Kinds of analytics a value can be	"Analytics of an account"
Charts of accounts	Accounts, their hierarchy and what each is broken down by	A general ledger
Charts of calculation types	Kinds of accrual and deduction, and how they interact	Salary, bonus, sick leave
Information registers	Facts by key, optionally over time	Prices, exchange rates, an employee's position
Accumulation registers	Quantities and amounts that add up to balances or turnovers	Stock, settlements
Accounting registers	Double-entry bookkeeping over a chart of accounts	The ledger
Calculation registers	Payroll results over periods: displacement, base, recalculation	Accruals
Sequences	The order documents were posted in, for reposting from a point	Cost calculation order

Which register to choose:

• a value that changes at points in time (a price, a rate, a position) → information register;
• amounts that add up (stock on hand, what a client owes) → accumulation register;
• double entry → accounting register over a chart of accounts;
• accruals that cut and feed each other (sick leave cuts salary, a bonus is a share of salary) → calculation register over a chart of calculation types.

Inside an object

Open any object and it has some of these groups:

Group	What it is
Attributes	Its fields. Each has a type: a string, a number, a date, a reference to another object…
Tables	Its tabular sections: the lines of an invoice, the members of a group
Dimensions / Resources	For registers: what a record is keyed by, and what it holds
Enum values	For enumerations: the values
Forms	Windows to show it in; without them the platform generates one. See Forms
Commands	Actions the object offers on its forms and in the navigation
Templates	Print forms and other layouts
Composers	For reports: what to read and how to group and total it
Modules	The object module (code run when the object is written or posted) and the manager module (code for the whole kind). See Modules and the language

Common

Group	What it holds
Common modules	Code shared by the whole configuration
Common forms	Forms that belong to no object
Common commands, Command groups	Actions and how they are grouped in the interface
Common templates	Layouts that belong to no object
Scheduled jobs, Predefined jobs	Code run on a schedule, in a session of its own
Event handlers	One handler for the same event of many objects
Session parameters	Values set at login and read by code for the rest of the session
Functional options	Switches that show or hide parts of the configuration
Common attributes	One attribute added to many objects at once
Pictures	Icons and images
Sections	The navigation panel: what users see first
Roles	Rights per object and operation. A role either grants or restricts; row-level rules live in the role's code
Languages	The languages captions are written in

How the tree becomes tables

Each stored object becomes database tables, and each attribute becomes a column. When you apply (Save metadata), the designer compares the configuration with the base and changes only what differs. You never write table definitions by hand.