Displaying alternate forms of a view

A view is composed of a query and a form. A query represents a selected portion of all available data that is displayed by a view. A view's form specifies how the query data is summarized and displayed.

When you request a view, a query is made against the collected data. The appropriate data is filtered and stored as query data. Each view's form formats and summarizes the query data.

Views Composed of Queries and Forms

Each view contains one form, but query data can be shared by several views. Views that share data from a single query are known as alternate forms. In the example shown in Figure 5-2, views A, B, C, and D are alternate forms of each other.

The principal benefit of using alternate forms is fewer systems resources are required because views use the same query data.

Each view does not require an update request to select query data. You can display alternate forms of a view with the FORM command. The syntax of the FORM command is:

FORM {view name} keyword | positional

The view name parameter is required. It is the name of any view that is an alternate form of the current view. You can find alternate forms of your current view with online view help. After you bring up your view's online help, scroll forward until you see the Forms that are valid for this view option. Hyperlink on the option, as shown in the following figure:

Selecting the Alternate Forms Option from View Help

The following figure shows a pop-up help window listing the names of VistaPoint views that are alternate forms of each other:

List of Alternate Forms of a View

The keyword and positional parameters are optional. Both parameters allow you to apply filters to specific view fields to restrict the query data that appears in the alternate forms of a view. The parameters are useful when you want to limit the amount of data shown in an alternate form.

As in the case of the view name parameter, the keyword and positional parameters are selected from a view's online help. If you look again, the online help has hyperlink options that list a view's element names that can be used as keyword or positional parameters.

When you display an alternate form of a view, its name field appears in the form field of the window information line. In the following example, APOVERC is the alternate form that results from invoking the FORM command from the WKOVER view.

You can display up to 20 different forms against a single query. Each time you select an alternate form with the same query data, the view is added to the forms stack. The alternate forms are serially linked together.

Below shows an example of four views in a forms stack. View A was the original view. The other views were added in order (B, C, and D).

Alternate Forms Stack

You can cycle forward or backward through the forms stack with the FNEXt and FPREV commands. Each time you enter either command, you shift to the alternate form immediately above or below the current view in the stack. 

When you issue the FNEXt command at the last form in the stack, you return to the first view. The names in the view and form fields of the window information line should be the same.

Use the ENDQuery command to end the forms stack and return to the original view.

The following table shows BMC AMI Ops commands that are useful for displaying alternate forms of a view:

Commands to Display Alternate Forms of a View