Advanced Aggregates Exercise

Table of Contents
Outline................................................................................................................................. 2
Resources 2
Scenario 2

How-To................................................................................................................................. 4
Getting Started 4
List all the Employees with Department and Full Name 7
List all the Projects with Number of Employees per Project 13

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 Outline
In this exercise, we will create two different Aggregates, where we'll need to use
multiple sources, calculated attributes, and even aggregation functions. These
aggregates will need to respectively answer the following requirements:

● List all the Employees and the department they belong to. This list of Employees
should be sorted alphabetically and present the first and last name of the
Employee in the following format: Last Name, First Name.

● List all the projects in the database. This list should give us all the name of the
project, alongside the number of employees in the project, sorted from the
project with more members to the one with less members.

Resources
This exercise has a Quickstart application already created. This application has
everything needed to start the exercise. This quickstart application can be found in the
Resources folder of this exercise, with the name Advanced Aggregates Exercise.oap.

Scenario
In this exercise, we will start from an existing application with one module. Inside that
module, we have a data model already defined, with three Entities.

The module has the logic to import data from Excel to populate these Entities. So, when
the application (and its module) is installed, the data will automatically be imported.

Finally, the module has a Server Action created, called AdvancedAggregates, where we
will do most of our work. As mentioned above, we want to create two Aggregates, to

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 give us very specific information about the Employees and Projects. As a recap, here is
what we want to do with our Aggregates:

● List all the Employees and the department they belong to. This list of Employees
should be sorted alphabetically and present the first and last name of the
Employee in the following format: Last Name, First Name.

● List all the projects in the database. This list should give us all the name of the
project, alongside the number of employees in the project, sorted from the
project with more members to the one with less members.

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 How-To
In this section, we'll show you how to do this exercise, with a thorough step-by-step
description. If you already finished the exercise on your own, great! You don't need
to do it again. If you didn't finish the exercise, that's fine! We are here to help you.

Getting Started
To start this exercise, we need to install the Quickstart file, Advanced Aggregates
Exercise.oap. This file has three Entities created and all the logic to populate them with
data.

The first step that we need to take is to install the Quickstart application in our
development environment. Before proceeding, you must have Service Studio open and
connected to an OutSystems Environment (e.g. Personal Environment).

1) In Service Studio's main window, select the Environment menu on the top left.

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 2) Select Open Files...

3) In the following dialog, change the file type to OutSystems Application Pack
(.oap), find the location of the Quickstart and open the file named Advanced
Aggregates Exercise.oap.

4) In the new confirmation dialog, select Proceed.

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 5) The application will begin installing automatically. When it's finished, we're
ready to start!

6) Open the application in Service Studio.

7) The application has only one module. Let's open it!

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 List all the Employees with Department and Full Name
In this section, we'll create the first Aggregate to fulfill the first requirement: list all the
Employees and the department they belong to.

The list of employees should be sorted alphabetically and present the employee's first
and last name, with the following format: Last Name, First Name.

1) The module already has the AdvancedAggregates Server Action created.

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 2) From the toolbox to the left, drag an Aggregate and drop it in the flow, between
Start and End.

3) Double-click the Aggregate to open it.

4) Click the Aggregate editor, and then select the Employee entity.

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 5) Click Add Source to add the second Entity to the Aggregate.

6) Select the Department entity and click OK.

7) Notice that the Join between the two Entities was created as Only With
automatically. Since all Employees have a Department, we will leave this as is.

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 8) In the aggregate editor on the right, click New Attribute. You may need to
scroll a bit to the right.

9) Select the Attribute1 name and set the name of the calculated attribute to
FullName.

10) On the new column, click Add formula to open the Expression Editor. You may
need to scroll down a bit in the Aggregate previewer to find the option.

11) Set the expression to:

Employee.LastName + ", " + Employee.FirstName

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 This will make sure that this column will return the Employee's full name, with
the last name appearing before the first name, separated by a comma.

12) Click the Sorting option on the top of the Aggregate.

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 13) Select Add Sort and choose the FullName attribute.

14) In the Aggregate previewer, the results should appear sorted by the Employee's
full name.

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 15) Change the name of the Aggregate to GetEmployeesOnlyWithDepartments.

List all the Projects with Number of Employees per Project

1) Return to the AdvancedAggregates Server Action, by double-clicking it on the

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 2) From the Data tab, drag the Project Entity and drop it between the existing
Aggregate and the End.

3) Double-click the GetProjects aggregate to open it.

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 4) Drag the Employee Entity and drop it in the Aggregate, to add it as a Source.

Notice that the ProjectMember Entity was also added, since it's a part of the
many-to-many relationship between the two Entities.

5) Hover the Name attribute of the Project Entity and click the blue dropdown
arrow.

6) Select the option Group By Name that appears in the dropdown, to group the
results by Project.

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 7) Hover the FirstName attribute of the Employee Entity and click the dropdown
arrow.

8) In the dropdown, select Count to determine how many employees we have per
project.

Note: Alternatively, the count can also be done by the EmployeeId attribute,
being more efficient for the DataBase.

9) Open the Sorting menu, and delete the Sorting by Name.

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 10) Click Add Sort and choose the Count attribute. Click OK to close the window.

11) Change the Sorting to Descending, meaning from the projects with higher
number of employees down.

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 12) The Aggregate previewer should display the results sorted by Count, in a
descending order.

13) Publish the module to the server to save the work.

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