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Multi-value attributes in SimpleDB Management Tools

Tagged as SimpleDB Management Tools

SimpleDB, unlike a relational database, allows you to store multiple values against a single attribute. For example, in a Books domain, the Author attribute might contain multiple values to represent a book with several authors.

We’ve now added support for this feature to SimpleDB Management Tools. The latest version sports a new Edit Values button which pops up a dialog where you can add and delete values as well as editing them. In the grid, multi-valued attributes are shown with their number of values, and you can click the cell to edit the values without needing to go to the Edit Values toolbar button.

Of course, if you only want a single value against an attribute, you can still edit it normally in the SimpleDB Management Tools grid. You only need the dialog if you’re managing multiple values.

Want to give it a try? Download the free trial edition, or if you already own SimpleDB Management Tools then get the upgrade from the store.

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Posted by Ivan Towlson on 19 July 2009

4 Responses to “Multi-value attributes in SimpleDB Management Tools”

1. Any support for multi-value attributes coming in Lightspeed?

   Luke Jul 20th, 2009

2. I’ve been pondering how we might handle that. The difficulty is how to provide for multiple values without making it hard to work with single values (which I think are the more common case). Possibly this would just be a matter of the developer choosing whether to model the attribute as string / int / etc. or as List / List / List: the former would be easy to work with for single values, the latter a bit more fiddly but able to handle multiple values. Would an API such as that seem reasonable to you? I am not making any promises: we would need to look hard at what the implementation issues would be, and designer support would also be a concern, but we’re definitely open to adding this feature.

   Ivan Towlson Jul 21st, 2009

3. That does seem reasonable, and I’m not sure how else you would do it. Limiting the List types to lists of “primitives” would be fine. I wouldn’t expect List, just List, List, etc.

   Luke Jul 21st, 2009

4. argh… I wouldn’t expect List-of-Address, just List-of-string, List-of-int, etc.

   Luke Jul 21st, 2009

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