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The relations review form is intended as a means of entering data about each relation in the greatest level of detail although it may be used for entry of relations if required.

New Relations

New relations may be entered by moving to the first empty record. Ensure that the New Item Check check box is set on (showing a tick and "Y") to have a prompt appear at this point. The prompt advises you that you are about to create a new entry and allows you to choose whether or not to create it. (Note that you can easily move to the next empty record while scrolling the table so that this feature helps you to avoid creating unwanted entries.) The from or to sphere sequence will then be initialised depending on the field from which the empty record was reached. Thus, if the last From Seq. field is highlighted and you choose to move to an empty record by pressing Down Arrow, the new From Seq will automatically be entered according to the rules stated in Generated Sequence Codes. Likewise, a move from To Seq will generate a new sequence in the To Seq field of an empty record. The Relation Value of the new relation will be set to the first available value (excluding the None entry).

When you specify a new relation which includes an unknown sequence code, you can choose to create the appropriate Sphere Item, to create it and drill down to the sphere review form in order to name it and add any other relevant detail or to return to the relation to try a different sequence code. If you choose to retry, the sequence code will be set to "UNRESOLVED" and you must enter a new code. You can delete an unwanted relation at this point if you simply delete the sequence code entry and continue. If you do not change the "UNRESOLVED" value, you may not leave the relation record other than to leave the form when the record will be deleted.

Change of Relation Value

To change the Relation Value for any selected record, existing or new, click the radio button for the appropriate value in the Relation Values box. To delete a relation, click the "None (Delete)" value.

Attribute Details

When any field of a relation is highlighted, its Attribute Details will be shown at the bottom of the form and its notes may be edited by clicking the Note button. Notes are in "Formatted Memo" format and may include carriage returns, tabs and changes of font, font style and font colour. During editing, the Note button changes its appearance: a red X is shown across it. To leave note editing, click the Note button in this form.

Filtering

The table of relations shown can be filtered on either the from or the to sphere by entering a part sequence which restricts the displayed items to those in the hierarchy of which the filter forms the top level. The displayed levels of the from or to sphere may also be restricted by entering the desired level or an expression in the level filter field and pressing enter. (See the notes on filtering in Common Features and Facilities.) This facility may assist in focussing on a specific area or in finding one or more individual relations. A record count in the Names Box of the form shows the number of rows in the table as currently determined by the filters applied (if any).

Other Facilities

Other facilities available in this form include:

bulletDrill down - to review the detail of a sphere item, double click its sequence code in the relation table. This applies to either from or to items.
bulletInversion - to work with relations in the opposite direction, click the Invert button. NOTE that filtering is not preserved when you do this.
bulletUsing an External Matrix - to work with an external matrix, click the Matrix Options button and proceed as described in Using an External Matrix. From this form, a matrix table may be prepared using the single character codes for the relations between sphere items or with the full values. The former is preferable for printing matrices larger than about ten columns across although the full values are more explicit. To choose the mode, make the appropriate response to the dialogue box which is presented. Note that only the code content matrix can be clustered. The default name for the code style matrix table is "MXC" and for the value style, "MXN".

Printing

The Print button for the relation review form offers several options, the relations report, short sphere report, sphere report and "as seen" screen print. The sphere reports are based on the last sphere of the pair to have been active. That is for one or other of its filter fields to have been entered or to have been double clicked for drill down.