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XpressDox Support

Working with LinkToDataSource

Working with LinkToDataSource – example with a highly normalised data base. You need to access a database which has the following structure: Table “Contact” ContactFirstName ContactLastName ContactTitle Address City Region ContactTypeId Table “ContactType” TypeId TypeDescription TypeCode You can see that the actual value of TypeDescription is not kept in the

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Using a Stored Procedure as a Data Source

This Cookbook article refers to the AdventureWorks database which needs to be installed at a location available to your development environment. If you have not already done so, you can download the database from Download the AdventureWorks Database. It is assumed that you already know how to configure a datasource

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Configure a Web Service as a Data Source

Configuring a web service as a data source follows the same first steps as for other data sources. The first place where it differs is (obviously) at the point where you choose the type of data source: When you press the “Finish” button, the data source will be entered into

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Use a SQL Server Data Source to include Customer information on a template

XpressDox can provide data from a large number of source databases. In particular, SQL Server databases can be configured as Data Sources in XpressDox, and this makes it possible to include data form those databases in templates. This Cookbook recipe shows how to configure a SQL Server Customer table, from the Microsoft sample database “AdventureWorks”, as a Data Source, and then goes on to explain how to reference that Data Source in a template.

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Install a third party data source

It is possible to export an XpressDox configuration file which contains data source definitions. This exported configuration can then be sent to other interested parties and imported into their own configurations. A typical example is when a data source for a specific data base is created by, say, a system

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Configure A Data Source for an Elite Database

XpressDox can retrieve data from just about any data base, but in particular, data from the Elite practice management system can be made available to your templates. The Elite data base is a Microsoft® SQL Server database, and so can be configured as such in the XpressDox configuration dialog.  Below follows a step-by-step look at configuring a

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Creating new Data in a Data Source

With effect from version 6, XpressDox offers a number of features which help the template author to develop templates which add new data to data sources. For example, to open a new account in an accounting database. The commands which are used to create data in a data source are

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How to change data or insert new data into a data source

Data from a data base can be inserted into a template. Perhaps this data has changed since it was last updated in the database, and the template-running-user is the one who knows about this change. It should be permissible for the user to change the data and have the change propagated back into the database.

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Save the Dataset into a Database Column

There are any number of reasons that you might want to save the dataset for a template into a single column in as database.  One of these would be to report on the data set, as described here. The first step is to write the dataset into a column.  This is

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The Data Set Data Source

When you have a system of templates and have run them a number of times, say for a number of your customers, the saved data set files become a source of valuable information.  It would be nice to be able to access those data files as though they were a

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XpressDox Help Center

Use Google To Find Help Fast, e.g. xpressdox choosefromlist Press Getting Started in the XpressDox toolbar for basic template development Watch the tutorial videos View command help from list of commands Press F1 for help on a command in the Command Editor Brows through the Cookbook help files Search for User Reference help   Email

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List of Commands and Functions

Use Google to find help fast. For example, search on “xpressdox choosefromlist”. View or download a list of all commands and functions: Alphabetic List of Commands & Functions List of Commands & Functions by Category Click here for email support.

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Working with repeated elements – Part 1

Repeating data elements presents a challenge to the template author, especially in formulating sentences and descriptions where the number of parties or invoice items or other repeating data is unknown at the time of authoring the template. This recipe in the Cookbook demonstrates how XpressDox meets this challenge.

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ForEach: Handling repeating data

The central issue with repeating data is that the number of repeated data elements is not known at the time the template is authored, and so XpressDox offers the ForEach, List and Ordinal commands as a way of processing a variable number of repeated data elements.

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Using block commands in XpressDox

The ForEach and If commands are called ‘block commands’ because they are terminated with a separate End command. Between the start and end of the block there are other Merge Fields. There is a special behaviour related to block commands to help with eliminating unwanted empty paragraphs when the start and end appear on different paragraphs.

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Manage the number of items in a repeat – XpressDox

When users enter repeating data into your XpressDox template, you can manage the number of occurrences of a repeater. “Repeaters” are otherwise called “complex elements” in XML, but are essentially items through which you can iterate using a «ForEach()» in the template. An example would be My children are: «ForEach(Child)» Name:

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The InterviewTheme Command

The Desktop interview is, as of Version 12.0, available in 3 different themes, viz. Classic, Blue and White. The InterviewTheme command gives you control of this. It’s pretty simple: «InterviewTheme(White)» This selects, you guessed it, the White theme.

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The ChooseFromDataset Command

Please note that this command has not yet been fully implemented in the web as yet. We have a ChooseFromRepeatingData command (which is the same as ChooseFromData, but is a more descriptive name), and a ChooseFromDataElements command. The ChooseFromDataset command combines the functionality of the other two, and adds some

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Document per Repeated Item (new style)

Problem Statement Suppose you have an application which requires that one or more parties sign a suretyship document, with the requirement that each party signs their own document, not that they all sign the same document. The first thing to do is set up the suretyship template, with the relevant

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The YearsMonthsDaysBetween Function

As its name suggests, this function takes two dates as arguments and returns the difference as a number of years, months and days. It is not the same as combining the results of the MonthsBetween and DaysBetween functions together with the YearsBetween function. The simplest form takes only the starting

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