Folders and browsing

The contents in a MICHAEL database is organized in hierarchical folders, such as a hard disk. In order to manage contents in such as database, you need to be able to browse the folders and to create, modify and delete folders.

All these functionalities are explained in the getting started guide. We will only add information about home and system folders here.

1) System folders

Some folders play a key role in a MICHAEL database, and may be you don't have access to some of them. These system folders are all located at the root of the database; you can always browse to the root of the database by clicking on the Root link in the in context part of the viewing pane.

The following figure shows the root of MICHAEL database, with the system folders explained below:

The system folders and their role are:

Lists

Contains lists used in forms. These lists can be edited with a specific form. The guide for administrators contains a section on lists.

Templates

This system folder contains document templates with some fields already filled in. These templates can ease the creation of documents using forms.

XQuery

In this folder you can put administrative queries (using the Xquery language). These queries can then be run against the database.

XUpdate

Similar to the Xquery folder, you can put here administrative queries based on the Xupdate language to modify data. These queries can then be run later.

home

This virtual folder is the current user's home folder.

system

System information such as users.

Trash

The trash can, containing deleted documents. The trash can is personal to the user, it is not shared between users.

2) Home folder

Each user has its own home folder. This folder is always accessible from the context part of the viewing pane by clicking on the Home link. It is also accessible from the root of the database.

This folder behaves like any other one, you can browse to it, create sub-folders, create, copy or move documents, etc. You have all privileges on this folder, except to delete it, and you are the only user (except the database administrators) that can view its content. It is thus the right place to put your own data, temporary documents, test documents, etc.

Within this home folder, you will have some predefined folders, as the next figure shows:

The XQuery and XUpdate folders behave just like the corresponding system folders at the root of the database (see previous section). The Menu folder is a special folder where you can put the items you wish to appear on your personal homepage. This Menu folder itself contains two special sub-folders, as in the following figure:

The folder My shortcuts contains the links you will find in the personal homepage. Each link is a document in the folder. The folder My queries contains the queries you will find in your personal homepage. each query is a document in the folder.

Creating a link

To create a new link, go into the My shortcuts folder and click on the Add a document button. In the form you get, choose the datatype datatypes/default/links such as in this figure:

Once you click on the Create the document button, you will have a special form to create links or shortcuts for your personal homepage. This form looks like this one:

A link is first a title, which can be repeated in multiple languages if you wish, and then the URL itself. Relative URLs are matched against the root of the MICHAEL platform production module installation. In order to put the correct URL, it is recommended to either copy and modify an already existing shortcut or to browse to the location you wish as a target and to copy the relevant part of its URL. For instance, to link to the slide-show folder, use index?uri=/mpf/slide-shows/ .

Creating a query

To create a query in your home folder, browse to the XQuery folder special folder and then click on the Add a document button. You can then follow the instructions provided in the querying section of this reference guide.