Tuesday, June 14, 2011

I am probably still not completely clear on how transports relate to the ROD, but it turns out the transports can be connected to the ROD in several different ways. Indeed the ROD contains SMs for only one OD, and indeed that OD has a limited number of transports linked to it, but the ROD also contains GateReportingOrderDetails that may be linked to the same or even to different transports than the one from the OD. What Alexander was explaining to me, and like I said there could be some details that I am still trying to figure out, but the general idea was that the transports linked to a ROD are actually divided into two categories: planned transports, and actual transports. The transports that you are suggesting, the ones from the OD are actually planned and at the time of reporting they may be replaced by other transports, so the real transports that execute the order may be different from the ones in the OD. Also in the ROD for multi transport OD we have a special field that holds the transport for that specific ROD, so that is a real transport as well and because this is a field of the ROD itself, filtering on that transport will be relatively easy and will be executed by the system fast.

The problem is that there is no straight-forward and permanent link between the ROD and the transports. The more narrowly we can define exactly which of those transports the user needs to filter, the more robust our solution will be. Targeting all the above described transports would be an overkill, and would be extremely difficult to implement.

That is why I was asking you for screenshots, I was trying to narrow the list of transports that we have to filter. If you had sent me a GateTransport page where we have the executed order details at the bottom, I would know to filter by the gate transport. If you had sent me an OD screenshot, which in fact you did, but you didn't send a screenshot, but explained it in words instead, I will aim my solution at OD transports only, which I agree seem like the most likely candidates to be filtered. The situation where we have a transport in the GateReportingOrder detail which is not in the OD is very rare, but nevertheless it is valid, and when it happens the user will be asking why isn't their data showing in the report, so we have to be aware of that limitation and manage user expectations properly.

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