Showing the type hierarchy
When you are performing queries, you can set the conditions on any of your entity or link types. However, sometimes, you may want to perform a query on related entity types, for example accounts where you have more than one account type (Savings Account, Business Account, High Interest Account).
In some cases parent entity or link types, called abstract entity or link types respectively, are available to you. These abstract types effectively allow you to query across their children. In the above example, there may be an abstract entity type called Account. You will never see an Account entity type on your chart but you can perform a query on the Account type to find all of the Savings Account, Business Account and High Interest Account types that meet your specified criteria.
You can find out what abstract entity and link types are available to you by displaying type hierarchy diagrams for entities and links in the Types dialog.
Viewing the link type hierarchy
The Types dialog is split into two windows, one showing the entity hierarchy and the other showing the link hierarchy.
To find out which entities might appear at the end of the selected link type, in the link hierarchy window, double-click on a link or select a link and click Show Link Ends. A new window is displayed showing the possible links ends. When you have finished, click Close.
Printing and changing the view of the hierarchies
You can print or change your view of the hierarchy in both the entity and link windows.
- To print the hierarchy, click Print above the entity or link hierarchy window as required.
- To view the contents of either window at normal scale, click the appropriate Actual Size.
- To see the entire hierarchy in the entity or link window, click Fit Chart in Window button.
When you have finished viewing the hierarchies, click Close.