Dependency Management

Most objects (maps, structures, etc) have a dependency relationship with other objects. For example, a map depends on the structure(s) that define the input and output. These dependencies are managed automatically so that a change in a dependent object (the structure in the above example) would be reflected immediately in the map object, even without saving the structure object. The dependency management applies to all related objects, like structures that inherit from other structures, or a structure's use of a namespace container.

If, for example, you have a map editor open and one of the map's structures open in another editor and change and save the structure, when you switch back to the map editor it will detect the structure has changed and revalidate the map against the structure, reporting any problems encountered.

For performance reasons, the dependency information is tracked in separate metadata (so that it can be referenced without examining all possible objects). This metadata is automatically calculated and can be easily manually rebuilt if required.