Structure Clause for the Expand Businessobject command

If you expand an object using the filter, from, to, relationship , and/or type clauses of the Expand Businessobject command, you have defined a structure that is not necessarily easy to define again. If you want to reuse this structure you can save it to your workspace using the structure clause.

For example:

expand bus Assembly 12345 1 from relationship “As Designed” filter Part 
structure “Assigned Parts”;

A structure stores all the information (including objects, relationships, and relative level number) necessary to recreate the printed output. The Structure clause is optional. It can be used with any of the other Expand Businessobject clauses, including select, output, and set.

If an object has been disconnected or deleted, it is no longer listed as part of the structure. If the deleted or disconnected object was expanded as part of the structure, its “child” objects would also be removed from the saved structure.

On the other hand, if other objects are connected after the structure is saved, they will not automatically appear in the output of the print structure command.

Also, if a business object (and its relationships) are moved to another vault, the structure will usually still remember them. However, if an object is moved to a vault in which no other object in the structure currently resides, the object will not be found. If this object is the “top” object in the structure (that is, the object that was expanded to create the structure), an error will occur if one tries to do anything with the structure. If the “lost” object is a child in the structure, it and all objects under it will not be listed as part of the structure.

Another expand command would need to be executed with the Structure clause to update the structure, in any of these cases. For more information, see MQL Concepts: Working with Saved Structures.