You can combine data views of several EDE views into one union EDE view. This action creates a single read-only EDE view of the selected views.
Any filters, sorting, or grouping applied to your source EDEs are not considered when creating an EDE union view.
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In the EDE Explorer, select the EDE views that want to use for the union view.
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Right-click the selected views and then on the shortcut menu, click Union View.
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On the View Properties (New) dialog box, type a name of the new union view.
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Select an appropriate view type and published document type (if you are working in an integrated environment).
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Type a short description if needed.
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Select the Suppress Repeating Values check box, if you don't want to display in the grid values that are repeated more than once.
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When working with a Microsoft SQL database, selecting Suppress Repeating Values in combination with Note fields, causes the query/EDE to display incorrectly.
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When any of the following Note attributes belonging to specific Item Types are included in your query, the complete EDE appears blank.
Item Type
Attribute Category
Attribute
Instrument
General Properties
Instrument Note
Loop
Identification
Loop Note
Panel
General Properties
Panel Note
Process Data (Shared)
General
Calculation Sheet Program Notes
Process Data Sheet Notes
Spec
Spec Sheet
Spec Note
Maintenance Event Activities
Custom Fields
Work Activity Text — User Defined Fields (UDFs) 001, 002, and 003.
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When adding one of these Note attributes, when the software detect that it is not compatible with your query a message is displayed on the screen, but the software does not remove the attribute from the query, this you must do manually.
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Browser views that were converted to EDEs after upgrading from version 2013 that include any Note field, appear completely blank when opened. To correct these issues, in the Edit EDE Definition dialog box clear the Suppress Repeating Values check box.
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Click OK.
For better clarity and understanding we recommend, where possible, to adjust the column names of the source EDEs before the union, so that once the union is created the column names are understandable. For example, source EDE 1 has a column called "Cable Description" and source EDE 2 has a column called "Panel Description", renaming both columns to "Description" makes for an easier to understand union EDE.
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A union EDE view is a read-only view. The data in this view cannot be edited.
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A union EDE view cannot be edited in the Query Builder.
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A union EDE view cannot be regenerated or checked for template inconsistencies.
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The EDE views must have the same number of columns, which is the same number of properties.
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A union EDE view contains all the query definitions of all the selected EDE views, both hidden and unhidden.
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The data in the columns of each EDE View must be compatible, hence belonging to the same data type (for example, text only, alphanumeric data, and so forth).