Chapter 3: Data Management 63
iTool Developer’s Guide Data Type Matching
Data Type Matching
To understand how the iTool data type matching system works, consider the
following:
• When a visualization is created, it registers one or more parameters, assigning
a parameter name and one or more iTool data types to each.
• When a data object is imported or created by an iTool, it is assigned one or
more iTool data types.
• When a parameter set object is created to contain data objects, each data object
can optionally be assigned one or more parameter names.
Now assume that an iTool user requests that a particular visualization be created from
a particular collection of data objects, which are stored in a parameter set object. The
iTool system will do the following:
1. Retrieve the parameter name and iTool data types registered for the
visualization’s first parameter.
2. If the parameter set object contains a data object whose Parameter Name
matches the parameter name of the visualization’s first registered parameter,
use that data object as the data for the visualization parameter.
3. If the parameter set object does not contain a data object with a matching
Parameter Name, check the parameter set for data objects for which the
Parameter Name property is not set. If there are no data objects without
Parameter Names, no data is associated with the visualization parameter.
4. Check the iTool data types of the data objects without Parameter Names. If a
data object whose iTool data type matches the list of registered data types for
the visualization parameter is found, use that data object as the data for the
visualization parameter. If no data objects match any data types, no data is
associated with the visualization parameter.
5. Repeat until all registered visualization parameters have been either populated
with data, skipped, or there are no more data objects to supply data.
Note
Parameter name matching is done in a case-insensitive fashion. If a parameter is
registered with the parameter name “MyParameter” and a data object has its
Parameter Name property set to “myParameter”, the two will match.
