# Selecting Entity Objects to be Used by a View Object

While creating a view object with the View Object Wizard or editing a view object in the View Object Editor, use the Entity Objects page to choose the entity objects that this view object will access. You can also specify an alias and additional properties.

Available

> This is a list of entity objects defined in the current package. You might need to expand the tree structure to see the list of entity objects within. To choose an entity object from the list, click its name, and then click the right-arrow. JDeveloper displays the name in the Selected list.

Selected

> This is a list of entity objects that can be accessed by this view object. As each entity is inserted into the view object, the name is made unique. The first entity inserted defaults to updateable (the Read Only option is cleared). All succeeding entities are defaulted to select Read Only and Reference.

> To remove an object from the list, click its name, and then click the left-arrow.

Alias

> A name that identifies an instance of an entity object. If the object is used more than once, aliases can help you distinguish between the instances. Although a unique default name is generated for you, you might want to use a more meaningful name.

Read Only

> When this checkbox is selected, attributes from the corresponding entity object cannot be edited from this view object. A view object can have at most one entity object that is not read-only. In other words, when a view object is based on two or more entity objects, only one (or none) of those entity objects can be updated. By default, the first entity object is updateable and subsequent ones are read-only.

Reference

> When this checkbox is selected, the information from this entity should be treated as reference information in this view object, with automatic lookup. Attribute values are dynamically fetched from the entity cache when a controlling key attribute changes.

> For example, take a view object called `EmployeeList`, which includes attributes from an `Employee` entity object as well as attributes from an `Department` entity object. if the `Department` entity object is flagged as a Reference, then setting the `Employee.DeptNo` attribute in the view object from `10` to `20`, changes the department that the current employee works in, and automatically retrieves the proper department name into the current view.