In Data Access, you will find a set of gadget classes that can be seamlessly integrated with the data sources described in the previous section. These gadgets are known as data-source-aware gadgets.

A data-source-aware gadget class is a class that inherits through multiple inheritance paths from both the IlvGadget class (or one of its subclasses) and the IliFieldItf class.

The IliFieldItf class defines the interface common to all data-source-aware gadgets. It has member functions that deal with such operations as connecting to a data source, querying or changing the value of the gadget, and so on.

For instance, the IliEntryField class is the data-source-aware version of the Rogue Wave Views IlvTextField class. It has two superclasses, IlvTextField and IliFieldItf. See Data Sources and Gadgets.

The IliFormat class is used to format values according to different rules. For instance, it is possible to define a format that specifies that floating-point numbers should be displayed with three digits after the decimal point. See the description of the IliFormat class in Utility Classes.

Once a format has been defined, it can be used in C++ code to convert an IliValue object into a character-string representation. Alternatively, it can be used to configure a data-source-aware gadget so that the values displayed in the gadget are formatted according to a predefined format.

Formats are defined using the format specification language described in Format Syntax.

The IliInputMask class is similar to the IliFormat class except that it also manages user input in addition to the format. Masks can be used to:

A specification language lets you specify masks from within Rogue Wave Views Studio. This format specification language for masks is described in Appendix C.

It is possible to specify a mask in C++ instead of using the specification language. The IliInputMaskIpl class needs to be subclassed for this purpose.