Contents
Overview
This pattern outlines the essential behaviors common to the entire UX of an Oracle Alta UI cloud service:
- Data persistence
- UI state persistence, and
- Save models
Note that the functions discussed here are general behavioral aspects of the UX. This pattern doesn't pertain to behaviors specific to a given feature of the UX, such as Search, because Search is not essential to the UI.
UI State and Data Persistence
Stateful UI elements maintain the transient values of their properties. For example, a stateful table will continue to show which row was selected by the user, as long as the user doesn't select another row in the table or initiate any action designed to reverse the state of the selected row. The feedback of highlighting a selected row persists for the user. A stateless table would provide no such feedback.
Teams decide at design time whether the UI state and user data will persist across pages within the suite, including in the event that a user navigates away from a stateful UI to some other page, or adds or updates data on a page. Otherwise, if the user were to navigate away from a stateful UI to some other page, even within the service, there is no guarantee that the UI elements on the exited page will maintain the state of their transient properties. The same is true for user data. For example, when the user adds to or updates data on a page, that data value persists as long as the user remains on that page. Unless the user saves the data, the data is at risk of being lost if the user navigates to a different page – even within the same application.
- Some application implementations allow persistence of both UI state and user data, so long as navigation is within the same application.
- The decision whether to persist UI state and data across page navigation within the same application is made before the application is implemented, to ensure support.
- The UX is superior and seamless in presentation when UI state and data persists across page transitions, especially when designed for mobile use. For this reason, we recommend that an Oracle Alta UI application UI model persist both user data and UI state while the user remains within an application.
Data Persistence in the Save Model
The absence or presence of data persistence in the application significantly impacts the Save Model.
The absence of data persistence could potentially require frequent and explicit Save actions by the user in response to incessant warnings that user data could potentially be lost during page transitions. This could seriously disrupt the flow and feel of a UI, particularly on a mobile device. Further, the absence of UI state persistence would result in very poor performance, caused by users having to repeat the same checkbox or radio control selections each time they cycle back through a wizard, a multi-tab page or dialog (for example), prior to commit.
The most effective design choice for desktop and especially for the mobile UI, is implementation of both UI state and data persistence within the Oracle Alta UI applications.
With this approach, explicit Saves are reserved for the point within each task when the user expects or desires control over when to commit new or updated data to a permanent store.
Change History Table
| Date | Description of Change | By |
|---|---|---|
| April 14, 2016 | Version 1.1.1 - Revised organization and overall editing. | kass.mcmahon-kelly@oracle.com |
| December 3, 2015 | Version 1.1.0 - Revised for Alta. Added TOC and Change History table. | richard.wright@oracle.com |
| September 6, 2013 | Version 1.0.0 - Original document. | richard.wright@oracle.com |