12 articles about Fields, in reading order.
Parsware Platform
Text, numbers, yes/no, dates, option sets, lookups to one table or several, files and images. What each field type stores, the settings it takes, and the control a form shows for it, built on one table.
Parsware Platform
Make a field required once and every form asks for it. Make it read-only on one form and it's shown but not edited there. Give it a default control and format, and every form and view shows it the same way.
Parsware Platform
A lookup field links a record to one in another table. Adding one also creates the relationship between the two tables, gives the form a search that finds records as you type, and puts a Related tab on the record at the other end.
Parsware Platform
Sometimes a link can point at more than one kind of record. A course is booked by a company or by a person. In Parsware that's one field, a lookup to several tables, with a tab for each table on the form and a Related tab on both.
Parsware Platform
An option set is a list of choices you define once and use on any table. Each option can have a colour and an icon, and gets a number from your publisher's range that never changes, so renaming is safe and two publishers' lists never collide.
Parsware Platform
Every table has a State and a Reason. Design the lifecycle your records move through, with a reason under each state, colours and icons that read at a glance, and numbers from your publisher's range.
Parsware Platform
An auto-number field gives every new record a reference like EQ-2026-00001 the moment it is saved. Nobody types it, nobody can change it, and nobody has to look up the last one used. We imported the Enquiries sample, saved a few enquiries, and changed the format halfway through.
Parsware Platform
A table's constraints are rules the database itself enforces: no two records may share a code, and no two bookings of one thing may overlap. They hold for a form, an import, a script and two people saving at the same moment. We imported the Court Bookings sample and tried to break both.
Parsware Platform
A File field holds a document and an Image field holds a picture, each belonging to one record. Add one to a table, attach a file on the form, and see what Save, the size cap and the record's permissions do with it.
Parsware Platform
A field's type decides what it stores. Its control decides how people fill it in. Turn a yes-or-no field into a switch with its own words, show a date in the Persian calendar, and put a control you built yourself on a form.
Parsware Platform
Every table keeps four stamps for you, Created On, Created By, Modified On and Modified By, plus an Owner. Put them in a view or on a form and people see names and dates, not ids, with nothing to set up.
Parsware Platform
In Parsware, saving a table is applying it. The database table and its columns exist before the screen comes back, a form and a view come with it, and a change that would cut stored data short is refused.
