Back Forward How to complete a Pages & Classes tab

  Show all 

At runtime, the system uses information on the Pages & Classes tab of several rule forms to locate properties and values on the clipboard. Over time, a user's clipboard may grow to contain thousands of properties. The Pages & Classes tab improves performance by limiting the search for a property to a specific page or pages.

  Purpose

As they run, many types of rules may access or update information on two or more clipboard pages. The rule forms for several rule types include a Pages & Classes tab that contains an array.

The system uses information on this tab to quickly locate properties and the correct corresponding property rule.

For example, a clipboard might contain two property values (on two different pages, each of a class derived from the Work- base class) both defined by the standard property rule Work-.pyID. In another case, two unrelated properties named AccountBalance might be present on one clipboard, one from Data-ConsumerAccount-Savings class and another from an independently developed corporate finance application. The system uses the Pages & Classes tab to resolve — disambiguate — such situations.

  How to complete

To complete a Pages & Classes tab, follow these guidelines:

      MyToplevel.APageList().APageGroup().APage

NoteThe Top keyword is not meaningful and so not allowed in the Pages and Classes tab of a list view or summary view rule. 1/31/08 MIRAT

  Matching at runtime

The pages that Process Commander uses to process a rule may vary from execution to execution of that rule. The system neither requires nor checks that all the pages listed are present each time it runs the rule. It only determines it can find the properties needed to perform the current execution.

TipIn some situations, the class of a page may vary from execution to execution. If all the properties referenced are available in a common parent class, you can list the parent on this tab, even though the page belongs to a subclass.

For example, an activity may operate on a page named Customer that, in some situations, has the class Data-Account-Savings and in other cases has the class Data-Account-Checking. If all the properties that the activity needs — for example CurrentBalance and AccountOpenDate — are defined in the Data-Account- class, you can list Data-Account- in the Class column.

However, if the activity needs to access both checking and savings data at once, the activity needs to work with two pages — one of each class — with distinct page names.

  Identifying pages in your application

Managing the number and names of clipboard pages referenced in your application is important. Using too many pages, or omitting to remove the pages when no longer needed, can add to the runtime memory demand of your applications. Misspelling page names or having two copies of one page (with different names) can also hurt performance or make testing difficult.

Select Pega button> Data Model > Clipboard > Named Pages to access a list of the named pages used by the current application.

  Special cases

Certain rule forms offer more capabilities for greater power and flexibility:

Definitions clipboard, indirect page, locatable page, page
Related topics Clipboard tool
Understanding page names and reserved pages

UpDesigner Studio basics