Programmatic Identifiers
You will also need to decide on programmatic identifiers. These identifiers allow your filters and command handlers (i.e.: your programs) to uniquely identify individual business object instances.
In the List Manager you use a set of parameters to indicate your chosen programmatic identifiers:
- AKey1, AKey2, AKey3, AKey4 and AKey5 specify (or receive) the alphanumeric values that identify a business object instance. They are optional and their maximum length is 32 characters (each).
- NKey1, NKey2, NKey3, NKey4 and NKey5 specify (or receive) the numeric values that identify a business object instance. They are optional and their maximum precision is 15,0 (each).
So a business object instance can have up to ten programmatic identifiers, five alphanumeric and five numeric, in any combination. You might just use one or two identifiers, but you can also concatenate several pieces of information into a single AKeyn value, so effectively you can have more keys than 10.
Here are some examples of how you might identify your business objects:
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Business Object |
AKey1 | AKey2 | AKey3 | AKey4 | AKey5 | Nkey1 | Nkey2 | Nkey3 | Nkey4 | Nkey5 |
| Product |
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Product Number |
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| Customer |
Customer Number |
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| Account |
Account Number |
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Company Number |
Major Account |
Minor Account |
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| Department |
Department Code |
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| Section |
Department Code |
Section Code |
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Remember that these identifiers must uniquely identify an instance of the business object to your programs but that nobody is going to see them (unless you make them visual identifiers).