Beginner’s guide to OutSystems that enables Digital Transformation to Businesses with enterprise-grade applications – Part 4

In this last part of the Beginner’s Guide to Outsystems Development, we are going to know about the “DATA” tab.

When it comes to data, we need storage space to store. In OutSystems we have the built-in database, we can also integrate it with an external database. In OutSystems, we create Entities and Attributes related to the business concept.

In the DATA tab, there are:

• Entity Diagrams
• Entities
• Structures
• Client Variables
• Site Properties
• Multilingual Locales
• Resources??

Entity Diagrams

We can create entity diagrams also known as entity relationships by right clicking the mouse, drag and drop entities to the screen it will create diagrams with relationships like the image in the below.

Entities – Database:

We can create entities and attributes, create static entity, take a dependency on entities that exist in the external application, import entities from Excel data, and integrate with the external database.

Entities represent the data structure of the application. We can define entities to model the application’s data entities such as Products, Customers, Orders, etc. Entities are two types Dynamic and Static entities.

• Dynamic Entity: When the data changes frequently or is user-generated, such as customer information, orders, transactions, etc.
• Static Entity:A fixed set of values that remain constant throughout the lifecycle of an application. For example: States, Countries, an Cities's values remain constant.
• CRUD Operations: Every dynamic entity has Create, Create or Update, Update, Get, Get for update, and Delete operations, Static entity has only Get action.

Attributes are the properties of an entity, we can define attributes such as text, numbers, Boolean, etc., and set properties like default values, data types, and validations. Entities are related to each other many relationships exist between entities One-to-One, One-to-Many, Many-to-Many. For data retrieval operations we can use “Indexes” to improve performance of database queries. Aggregates are used to retrieve data from the database. You can define queries using aggregates to fetch and manipulate data from one or more entities.

Structures:

Same as entities we can create structures, add structures from Json, can take dependencies from other applications.

Structures are data structures used to represent complex data objects that don’t require storage, such as data transfer objects, Parameters, or aggregates. Structures are not directly mapped to the database but are similar to database tables.

Client Variables:

Variables used to hold data on the client-side throughout the user’s session. Client variables used to store temporary data that needs to persist across multiple screens or user interactions without the need to communicate with the server.

Site Properties:

Global configuration settings that can be defined at the application level. Site properties are used to store URLs, API keys and other application-wide configuration parameters. Modifications in site properties can be done within service studio and available throughout the application.

Multilingual Locales:

Add locale

We can add locale and edit translation, import and export resource documents.

Outsystems support creating and managing multilingual applications which support multiple languages and cultures within an application allows the application to dynamically switch between languages based on user preferences or other criteria.

Resources:

Resources are files (such as images, documents, or scripts) that are included in an Outsystems application. They can be uploaded directly into the application or referenced from external sources. Resources are typically used to provide additional content or functionality within the application, such as images for user interfaces, Javascript files for client-side logic, or documents for download.