Briefcase Explorer (Windows)
A useful feature of Data Abstract is that you can opt persist data locally that has been received from Relativity Server. This is advantageous when your client application loads it can immediately display data from the user before updates have been pulled from the server.
During testing, and for debugging problems that users encounter, it can be useful to examine that data stored in those Briefcase files.
This is where this tool steps in.
How to use it
Briefcase Explorer (DABriefcaseExplorer.exe) is located in
C:\Program Files\RemObjects Software\Data Abstract (Common)\Bin.
When you double click to open it you will be present with an empty window.
Select the folder Icon, or File->Open File Briefcase, navigate to the Briefcase file you are interested in and click open.
Note: Briefcase folders have a .briefcase extension, Briefcase files have a .daBriefcase extension.
When the data is loaded a container is shown on the left side showing any tables its contains.
To see the actual data, you need to select the table name, in this case "Workers", which loads the data from the briefcase and presents it in two tabs.
The Schema tab displays information about the fields in the table, what their data type is and what the size is where applicable.
The Data tab displays the actual data currently in the Briefcase file.
Note that the Data tab allows you to edit the data in the briefcase. Double click on the field whose data you want to change, type the new text and the press Return. At which point the Floppy Disk icon will be enabled. Click on the icon to save your changes, or select File->Save Briefcase.
You can also add completely new rows to the table. To do so, select the row with the * and start entering data into the fields. The data is verified against the schema, so if for instance you try to enter a string into the WorkerBirthData field you will get an error dialog.
In the Filter field you can enter statements to search for. For example, to search for the worker with the WorkerID 113, you would use WorkerID = 113 and then press the Apply button.
To see the whole table again simply click on the Clear button.