Differences between Developer Studio features available for Mid Tier and Progressive Web Applications

Differences in active links available in Mid Tier and Progressive View

The following table lists the active links supported in Mid Tier and Progressive View in Developer Studio.

Process commands available in Progressive View for creating PWA

The following process commands are available in Progressive Views in Developer Studio for creating PWA. For the complete list of process commands available for Mid Tier applications and PWA, see Process-commands.

• PERFORM-ACTION-ADD-ATTACHMENT
• PERFORM-ACTION-SAVE-ATTACHMENT
• PERFORM-ACTION-DELETE-ATTACHMENT
• PERFORM-ACTION-OPEN-ATTACHMENT
• GET-DIRTY-FIELDS
• PERFORM-ACTION-OPEN-URL
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-REFRESH
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-NEXT-CHUNK
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-PREV-CHUNK
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-CLEAR
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-SORT
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-COLUMN-SET-DISPLAY-TYPE
• PERFORM-ACTION-SEND-EVENT
• PERFORM-ACTION-ACTIVE-LINK
• PERFORM-ACTION-GET-FIELD-LABEL
• PERFORM-ACTION-GET-FIELD-ALTERNATIVE-TEXT
• APPLICATION-GENERATE-GUID
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-ADD-ROW
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-SELECTALL
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-DESELECTALL
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-DELETE-ROW
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-CLEAR-DELETED
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-DISABLE-ROW-REORDERING
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-ENABLE-ROW-REORDERING
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-RESET-ROW-REORDERING
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-ROW-SELECTION-MODE
• PERFORM-ACTION-GET-ENTRY
• SET-CHANGE-FLAG
• GET-CHANGE-FLAG
• SET-CHANGE-FLAG 
• APPLICATION-GENERATE-GUID 
• JAVASCRIPT
  This command requires adding a colon and space right after JAVASCRIPT when using the command in Progressive View.
  For example,
  JAVASCRIPT: alert("Hello")
• PERFORM-ACTION-SET-AUTOCOMPLETE-KEYSTROKE
• ENABLE-WAIT-CURSOR-ON-LONG-RUNNING-PROCESS
• APPLICATION-QUERY-DELETE-ENTRY
• APPLICATION-COMMAND
• PERFORM-ACTION-SET-BROWSER-TITLE
• PERFORM-ACTION-SET-HEADER
• PERFORM-ACTION-NESTED-TABLE-ENABLE-ROW-REORDERING
• PERFORM-ACTION-NESTED-TABLE-DISABLE-ROW-REORDERING
• PERFORM-ACTION-NESTED-TABLE-RESET-ROW-REORDERING
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-GET-SELECTED-COLUMN
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLE-IS-LEAF-SELECTED
• PERFORM-ACTION-VALIDATE-NULL-REQUIRED-FIELDS
• PERFORM-ACTION-FETCH-SURVEY-DATA
• PERFORM-ACTION-TABLECOLUMN-GET-FILTERQUAL
• APPLICATION-CONFIRM-GROUP
• CHANGE_HOTKEY_MENU
• SET_MIN_DATE
• APPLICATION-DELETE-ENTRY

Keywords available in Progressive View for creating PWA

The following keywords are available in Progressive View for creating PWA and keywords not in this list are available only for Mid Tier applications. For the complete list of keywords available for Mid Tier applications, see Keywords.

• NULL
• DEFAULT
• CURRENTTIMESTAMP
• TIMESTAMP
• TIME
• DATE
• WEEKDAY
• USER
• GROUPS
• LOCALE
• CLIENT-TYPE
• HOMEURL
• GROUPIDS
• SCHEMA
• SERVER
• OPERATION
• VUI
• ROLES
• EVENTTYPE
• EVENTDATA
• EVENTSRCWINID
• CURRENTWINID
• LASTOPENEDWINID
• ROWSELECTED
• LASTCOUNT
• LASTID
• ROWCHANGED
• ROWVISIBLE
• GUIDE
• CURRENTROWINDEX
• PREVIOUSROWINDEX
• CROSSLAUNCH
• PRINTMODE
• CROSSLAUNCHCONTEXT
• LASTMENUVALUE
• LASTMENURUN
• OS
• DATABASE
• SERVERTIMESTAMP
• TCPPORT
• VERSION
• VUI-TYPE
• FIELDLABEL
• FIELDNAME
• BROWSER
• SHIFT_KEY
• ALT_KEY
• CTRL_KEY
• SCHEMA-ALIAS
• SURVEYQUESTION_CURRENTID
• SURVEYQUESTION_LASTRESPONSE
• SURVEYQUESTION_CURRENTRESPONSE
• TARGET_FORM
• TARGET_VIEW
• TARGET_ID

Functions available in Progressive View for creating PWA

The following functions are available in Progressive View for PWA. For a complete list of all functions and their descriptions, see Functions.

• LOWER
• UPPER
• LTRIM
• RTRIM
• LENGTH
• LENGTHC
• LEFT
• LEFTC
• RIGHT
• RIGHTC
• STRSTR
• STRSTRC
• REPLACE
• LPAD
• LPADC
• RPAD
• RPADC
• SUBSTR
• SUBSTRC
• MAPGET
• COLAVG
• COLCOUNT
• COLSUM
• COLMIN
• SELECTEDRCOUNT
• COLMAX
• VISIBLERO
• DROPPEOLUMNINDEX
• DROPPEOWINDEX
• TRUNC
• DATE
• DATEADD
• DATEDIFF
• DATENAME
• DATENUM
• DAY
• HOUR
• MINUTE
• MONTH
• SECOND
• TIME
• YEAR
• WEEKDAY
• LISTGET
• LISTSIZE
• ROUND
• GETSURVEYSTATUS
• ISTABLESELECTALLCHECKED
• JSONMAP

You cannot add one function within another in Progressive View for PWA.

Specifying parameters in URL

The following functions are not supported in Progressive View for PWA:

• form (required)
• view
• app
• server (required)
• mode
• eid
• qual
• username
• pwd
• auth

The following functions are supported in Progressive View for PWA:

• origin
• targetForm
• targetView
• mode
• targetId
• rand
• entryId
• context

Capabilities, limitations, and behaviors

PWA screens have the following capabilities, limitations, and behaviors:

• You cannot use fields with menus attached inside a cell-based table in PWA.
• You cannot use Table Field with Set Field active links.
• The Wrap Text display property for a table field in PWA only works at the table level. 
  You cannot use the Wrap Text display property at column level. This means that you can implement wrap text only for an entire table and not to individual columns.
• If you want to create a table row that is selectable to users, you must add check boxes or radio buttons to the table rows. Application users can click the check boxes or radio buttons to select the rows. 
  In Developer Studio, for the table field, set the Display Type > Row Selection property to Multiple to enable checkboxes in the table rows.
  Similarly, set the Row Selection property to Single to enable radio buttons in the table rows
• Only Integer fields, Character fields, Button fields, Decimal fields, and Real fields are supported for table columns having edit mode.
• You cannot display group count for table groups in PWA.
  In the table properties, under Property > Attributes > Sort / Levels, the Count option in the Sort / Levels dialog is not supported in PWA.
• You cannot use editable cell-based tables in PWA. 
• If you create an active link that uses the Set Field option to add a table field to a character field, PWA screens show the following behaviors:
  • If the table field has any values, the character field is set to True.
  • If the table field has no values, the character field is set to False.
• Web Content Header and Web Content Footer properties are not supported on PWA screens.

• You can use the following JavaScript to trigger an event through a template on PWA screens:  

  parent.DView.SendSignalToParent(undefined, eventType, eventData);

  Example:

  function handleTitleClick()
  {
  eventData['entityType'] = "INC0000000001";
                  if(parent.DView.SendSignalToParent)
  {
                      parent.DView.SendSignalToParent(undefined, eventType, eventData);
  }
  }

  In the JavaScript, eventType is a string and eventData is JSON. eventType and eventData get mapped to EVENTTYPE and EVENTDATA keywords.

• The context for dynamic image loading for PWA screens is arsys/pwa, while it is arsys for Mid Tier. The file path should be created likewise for dynamic image loading.

  The following table shows how an image file path should be specified in Mid Tier and PWA:

  Incident ID	Status	Image file path in Mid Tier	Image file path in PWA
  INC0000001	Approved	./resources/standard/images/img1	../resources/standard/images/img1
  INC0000002	Rejected	./resources/standard/images/img2	../resources/standard/images/img2

Localization

The following similarities and differences exist when performing localization of Mid Tier applications and PWA:

Date and time format in PWA and Mid Tier for Regional locales of English

Even though the CCS parameters useARUserPreferenceForDateTimeFormat and useARUserPreferenceForLocalization are both set to true, dates are displayed differently in PWA and Mid Tier as indicated by underlined text in the following table:

Menus

Only search menus (Menus > New Search Menu) are supported on PWA screens. You cannot create other menus, for example, character menu, file menu, SQL menu, and so on in PWA.

Instead of using an SQL menu which is not supported for PWA, you can perform the following workaround:

1. Create a custom view form by using the SQL query.
   For more information, see Creating-and-modifying-view-forms.
2. Create a custom search menu which pulls information or records from this custom form.
   For more information, see Creating-search-menus.
   Use this custom search menu instead of the SQL menu.

PWA screen layout in tablets and mobiles

The illustrations in the following table show how the UI layout varies according to the device and screen size:

From the illustrations, you can see that PWA screens have the same layout in tablet views and desktop views. PWA screens display the mobile view only when you view the application screens on mobiles. As a result, you may see differences in how the application layout is displayed on tablets and desktops when compared to mobiles.