What is the difference/relation between Context node and Context element?

[Former Member]

All,

I am new to Webdynpro and trying to understand the dynamic creation of context elements.

On the way I came through the terms context node and context element interchangeably in many tutorials including help.sap.com.

The slight difference I found from these tutorials is that Context node is for design time and element is for runtime.

But I want to know the exact relation between node and element.

Is it the case that node is a template and element is instance?

If design time representation is like this

<context>
  <dropdown1 empsel1="defaultvalue"/>      
  <dropdown2 empsel2="defaultvalue"/>      
</context>

And during runtime,(I want to add elements in runtime) with addition of elements and attributes, is it going to become something like

<context>
  <dropdown1>
       <element empsel1="val1"/>
       <element empsel1="val2"/>
       <element empsel1="val2"/>
  </dropdown1>
  <dropdown2>
       <element empsel2="val1"/>
       <element empsel2="val2"/>
       <element empsel2="val2"/>
  </dropdown1>
</context>

Abap debugger displays elements at runtime as represented above.

Am I right? Can anyone please clarify this to me?

Thanks.

Edited by: Nagarjuna Chirala on May 30, 2009 3:06 AM

[Former Member]

All responses are helpful. Thanks

[Former Member]

Hi,

The concept of node and element is taken from XML documents structure.

In XML also you have nodes, elements and attributes.

Like earlier said -

Context Node - Something like Table, Cardinaity defines how many rows you can have.

Element - One row of table

Attributes - Column of Tables

Regards

Manas Dua

[Former Member]

Hi,

Let me explain this concept in layman terms:

- A DDIC table has a structure, and this is equivalent to a context Node.

- The DB records present in the table is equivalent to a context node element.

Further if the context node has a cardinality as 0..1 or 1..1 then it can have only one record i.e. one context element, whereas if it has a cardinality of 0..n or 1..n then it is equivalent to a table which can have multiple records i.e. many context elements.

Hope this gives a better picture and makes it easy for you to understand.

Cheers!

Ashish.

[Former Member]

Hi,

Let me try:

Context node is a kind of abstraction class that is used to store the runtime data. Nodes are arranged in hierarchy manner with attributes and other nodes as children.

Children entities are grouped into a single unit called Context element. a context node is a collection of context elements. it is same like rows in a table.

Thanks,

Rahul