Lookup Tables

Lookup tables contain basic facts that are not specific to an experiment and are fairly persistent. Their contents are typically small. In GUIs, lookup tables are often used for drop-down menus or radio buttons. In computed tables, they are often used to specify alternative methods for computations. Lookup tables are commonly populated from their contents property. In an ERD they are shown in gray. The decision of which tables are lookup tables and which are manual can be somewhat arbitrary.

The table below is declared as a lookup table with its contents property provided to generate entities.

File +lab/User.m

%{
    # users in the lab
    username : varchar(20)   # user in the lab
    ---
    first_name  : varchar(20)   # user first name
    last_name   : varchar(20)   # user last name
%}
classdef User < dj.Lookup
    properties
        contents = {
            'cajal'  'Santiago' 'Cajal'
            'hubel'  'David'    'Hubel'
            'wiesel' 'Torsten'  'Wiesel'
        }
    end
end

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