Category: Object Maintenance

You can rename an object using the ZOMReName command. The new object name is specified using the target indicator “>”. The following example renames “Customers” to “Custs”.

ZOMReName Customers > Custs

Deleting an object can be accomplished by using the ZOMDelete command. The following example deletes the object “Customers”, causing its description to be removed from the Object Dictionary:

ZOMDelete Customers

Destroying an object using the ZOMDestroy command. The following example destroys the object “Customers”, removing all knowledge of the object:

ZOMDestroy Customers

ZOMDestroy is executed when deleting objects in DC.

You can copy an object using the ZOMCopy command. ZOMCopy is similar to ZOMReName, with the target referring to the new object name. The following example copies “Customers” to “TestCusts”.

ZOMCopy Customers > TestCusts

You can move an object from one directory to another using the ZOMMove command. A set of objects can be moved at once. The destination directory is specified using the target indicator “>”. The following example moves all objects named “Customers” (from the directories to which each belongs) to the directory NewDir:

ZOMMove Customers > NewDir

ZOM also provides a service, ZOMReCreate, for re-creating objects whose definition has changed. Recreating the object Employees would be executed as follows:

ZOMReCreate Employees

A common situation is dealing with “out-of-date” or “corrupt” objects. An object is considered corrupt if it depends on objects which have been erased or moved. Corrupt object must be recreated. You can recreate all corrupt objects using ZOMReCreate, as shown in the following example:

ZOMReCreate +p ec

With ZOM, it is important to differentiate between erasing an object, deleting an object, and destroying an object:

Note an object can be both erased and deleted without being destroyed. This happens if ZOMErase and ZOMDelete are used separately, rather than using ZOMDestroy, leaving the object registered in ZOM’s database.

Erasing an object can be accomplished using the ZOMErase command. The following command erases the objects named “Customers”:

ZOMErase Customers

Routine tasks performed by every Zim developer are creating, erasing, recreating, moving, and copying objects. Collectively, these tasks are called Object Maintenance. ZOM provides considerable assistance to the developer in this area.

ZOM is designed to process sets of objects and maintain knowledge of object dependencies. ZOM operates on sets of objects, rather than one object at a time. The knowledge of interdependencies enables the ZOM services to intelligently manage a set of objects and sequence operations properly.

When moving a set of objects from one directory to another, ZOM examines the list of objects specified and determines the correct order in which to move them, based on the interdependencies among the objects. The objects are then moved one at a time in the correct sequence.

The following subsections describe how ZOM services can be used to perform common object maintenance tasks. Although the examples tend to be simple, all services described support the various selection criteria and options.

All the ZOM object maintenance services also deal automatically with dependent objects affected by the processes you initiate. For example, dependent objects that become “out-of-date” because of a change to a dependent object are automatically updated. You can control how much work ZOM does to maintain dependent objects by customizing the ZOM configuration. For more information, see ZOMConfig.