Mapping data objects

Data mapping allows different custom page objects to share data. Data mapping has a variety of uses, the most common of which is to link two objects so that they show and update simultaneously on the custom page.

For example, if you have a data query object for viewing employee data, you can map an image file to the query so that when a user views data about the employee, the image of the employee also appears. When you move to a new employee record in the data object, the employee image is also updated. In this example, you might map the field for employee last name to the image.

You can also map a variable for a custom page object that stores the information the custom page sends when the user initiates an action with that object. For example, if a user clicks on a link within a custom page object, the URL for that link can be stored in a variable. You can then use data mapping to link to this variable to pass, for example, a URL to a Web Page object so that the Web Page object can display the HTML page for that URL. The name of these special variables consists of the custom page object name plus "URL," for example, RSS0URL.