In the last post I discussed the PMF Gadget Parameters and how you can access these values inside custom gadgets. In the future the handling of gadget parameters will be fundamentally changing. Here I’ll give you a sneak peak on some of our plans to improve this process.

We are changing the internals to handle dimensional parameters with a generic nomenclature. This means that a previous parameter of LOCATION would be called DIM02 instead. Similarly, looking at dimensional level parameters which might have been LOCATION_LEVEL01_VALUE=’EAST’ will now need to be accessed by doing DIM02_LEVEL01_VALUE=’EAST’. Those with database design backgrounds can think of this naming as a surrogate number to the proper dimension name.

You might be wondering – what are they thinking? Well, this actually is very powerful as it allows much more flexibility to allow dimension re-naming and not to mention better handling with other languages (such as with UTF8).

The good news is that this should affect very little if any of your custom gadgets. A specialized include will be provided that will convert back and forth the naming conventions that will allow older reports to function as is. At the very least you may need to add this one call to the beginning of your custom report. One noticeable difference will be when doing a view source of reports that it will show the surrogate number instead of the dimension name as it is currently done.

This is a heads up to some of the internal changes we have coming down the pipe. These changes will be discussed in more depth in the future.

Best regards,
Michael Paul
Senior Software Developer
WebFOCUS Performance Management