addedValues Plugin

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Type

addedValues requires that you specify the flavour of values that a variable will hold. For example, in a Manila Discussion group, every message has a subject and a message number. The subject can be an arbitrary string, but the message number is always a whole number. the flavour of values is called the Type of a variable. addedValues stores data as native values, which means the same way as the underlying Frontier application does. For a good introduction to this topic, see Frontier: The definitive Guide Chapter 10, Datatypes, by Matt Neuberg.

Supported Types

addedValues doesn't support all dataTypes described in Matt Neubergs book. The ones it does are

Boolean - values that are true or false
Character - a single character
Timestamp - (date datatype) a time and date
Decimal - a double precision decimal value
Small Integer - a whole number between -32767 to 32768
Integer - a whole number
Small Decimal - a single precision decimal number
String - an arbitrary string of characters (but see Value Must Be)
String4 - a 4 character string. (rarely used)

In addition, a Row Placeholder is a variable that other variables can "belong to", by setting their value of "Column in Row" to the name of the row placeholder variable. These dependent variables are called column variables. If the row placeholder variable is multiple value so are all the column variables. Importantly, if two values are assigned to column variables with the same value of subscript, they will remain "in synch". Think of a multiple valued row placeholder with more than one column variables as a matrix of values resembling a spreadsheet. The matrix can be sparse.