Foreign Tables

Any table object in Data Access can be used as a foreign table; that is, the subclasses, , , and so on. A foreign table is identified as such from another object. Each column of a table object or of the ,
, and gadgets can have a foreign table.

A foreign table has two main purposes. It can be used to map the values in a column to another set of values or it can be used to define the domain of values for the column.

There are two approaches for applying a foreign table to a table column.

• A foreign table can be applied to the column of a table object using the data source inspector in Views Studio. The foreign table then applies directly to any table gadget, or form created with the Forms Assistant that is subsequently connected to the data source.

• A foreign table can be applied to a particular data-source-aware gadget. In this case, the foreign table applies only to the gadget.

Foreign tables are specified in the appropriate inspector in Views Studio. In the Data Access API, the methods found in the IliTable (see Schema Properties) and IliFieldItf classes (see Foreign Table) can be used to specify the foreign table.