Reference Property

Before the addition of the Reference property, for controls like the Table control, it could be difficult to configure the control when the control's Data Source tag name included a global alias or was generated by an expression. These aliases and expressions could not be resolved in Configure mode, so the information required to configure the control, such as the fields of the Table control, had to be entered manually or possibly could not even be entered at all.

There is a field available for many controls called Reference. The Reference field appears under the Data Source field. When the Data Source has a dynamic name, the tag listed in the reference field will be used to configure the control.

For example, in the Table control, if the Data Source was set to a dynamic tag name, alias like "db:Northwind.<#TableName#>", the control cannot determine the value of the <#TableName#> alias in runtime, so the "generate fields" button on the Fields tab would not be able to retrieve any fields. However, when the Reference field is set to a static tag name, like "db:Northwind.Reviews", the "Generate Fields" button will be able to successfully retrieve the fields from the Reviews data source.

For best results, users should ensure that the tag name used in the Reference field is a valid possible result of the aliases or expression used in the Data Source field.

The controls that have this reference field are:

• Table

• Heatmap

• Data Diagram