In order to simplify the creation of evaluating expressions for the XAF KPI we have implemented a new PropertyEditor - PopupExpressionPropertyEditor.
Let's demonstrate its features in the FeatureCenter demo.
To enable this editor for a property of your object, set PropertyEditorType for the Expression property of the KpiDefinition class via Model Editor.
Then close Model Editor, navigate to KPI –> Definition, and open the "Sales" object:
Click the ellipsis button on the right side of the "Expression" Property Editor control. It will invoke the Expression Editor form, where you can easily compose expressions of any complexity. In FeatureCenter, we use a simple expression - let's select "Aggregate operations" and choose the "Sum()" operator.
Then we select "Fields" and choose the "Freight" field.
After that we can see the Sum([Freight]) expression in the corresponding KpiDefinition property.
For now, we have PopupExpressionPropertyEditor for the Windows Forms applications only. And of course, its usage is not limited to KPI module. For instance, I saw several times that customers had calculated user-specified properties or formulas that could be modified by end-users at runtime. Expression Property Editor will come in very handy for such scenarios.
Happy XAFing