clsPreferences

clsPreferences is the sole public type in SAIF.Presentation and the library's entire reason for existing: a per-user, per-application preference façade consumed by SAIF.Presentation.Web.Core.Infragistics111 and SAIF.Presentation.Web.Controls.V2.Menu to persist UI state such as Infragistics grid column order, widths, sort order, and size. On construction it opens an Oracle data portal (clsMSOracleDataLayer, user CLM) and eagerly loads every stored preference for the effective user through SAIF.Framework.Preferences.PreferenceData.GetPreferencesForUser; all subsequent reads and mutations are served from memory, and Save() is the only path back to persistence. The type is marked <Serializable()> even though it holds a live data-layer reference.*

Purpose

• Provide indexed, scope-aware read access to a user's preferences (BR-PRES-011).
• Provide mutators (Add, Remove, Clear, Delete) that update the in-memory preference set without touching the database until Save() is called (BR-PRES-019).
• Serialize and persist preference changes through the framework preference service, scoped to the store's current application (BR-PRES-020).

Context

• Namespace: SAIF.Presentation
• Assembly/package: SAIF.Presentation (packaged into SAIF.BOF.Presentation.Web.Infragistics111.nuspec as SAIF.Presentation.Web.Infragistics111.dll)

Public members

Member	Signature	Purpose
New	New(inUserID As String, inApplication As String)	Creates the store for a user and application and immediately loads that user's existing preferences into memory via Initialize → Load (BR-PRES-004).
New	New(userID As String, application As String, preferencesRootDirectory As String)	Same as the two-argument constructor; preferencesRootDirectory is accepted but ignored — it delegates to the same Initialize path.
Item	Item(inKey As Object) As Object (default property)	Looks up a value at page scope for the current application and derived page; returns Nothing when the key or record is not found (BR-PRES-008).
Item	Item(inKey As Object, inScope As PrefScope) As Object (default property)	Looks up a value at the specified scope for the current application, resolving the page key from scope before the lookup.
Item	Item(inApplication As String, inPage As String, inKey As String) As Object (default property)	Looks up a value across explicit application/page/key values, lower-casing all three and treating Nothing as an empty string, bypassing scope resolution (BR-PRES-012).
Count	ReadOnly Property Count As Integer	Returns the number of loaded Preference records (application/page bags), not the number of individual key/value items.
OverridePage	Property OverridePage As String	Sets or gets the page name used for non-web callers; when non-empty it takes precedence over the reflected call-stack page name (BR-PRES-010). Desktop callers must set this before calling Save() for page-scoped values to persist under a stable key.
Add	Sub Add(inKey As Object, inValue As Object)	Upserts a preference item at the default (PageLevel) scope; creates the backing Preference record if it does not exist yet (BR-PRES-013).
Add	Sub Add(inKey As Object, inValue As Object, inScope As PrefScope)	Upserts a preference item at the specified scope; replaces the value if the key already exists by removing then re-adding it, storing the value as inValue.ToString() (BR-PRES-014, BR-PRES-015).
Remove	Sub Remove(inKey As Object)	Removes one preference item at page scope for the current application/page; a missing key is a silent no-op (BR-PRES-016).
Remove	Sub Remove(inKey As Object, inScope As PrefScope)	Removes one preference item at the specified scope.
Clear	Sub Clear(inScope As PrefScope)	Empties every item in the Preference record for the current application and the scope's resolved page key (BR-PRES-017).
Delete	Sub Delete()	Empties the items of every loaded Preference record for the user, across all applications and pages (BR-PRES-018).
Save	Function Save() As Boolean	Serializes and persists every in-memory Preference record whose ApplicationName matches the current application through PreferenceData.SavePreferences, wrapping any failure in an ApplicationException (BR-PRES-023, BR-PRES-024). The return value is always False, even on success, because the local result is never assigned True — a verified defect.

Behavioral notes

• Every constructor path opens a live Oracle data-layer connection and loads all of the user's preferences (all applications, all pages) eagerly — there is no lazy loading or caching across instances (BR-PRES-004).
• The effective user identity used for load and save is IDataPortalInfo.UserID from the data portal, not the inUserID constructor argument (BR-PRES-003).
• All keys are lower-cased on every keyed operation, making preference keys effectively case-insensitive (BR-PRES-007).
• A private FormatKey method builds application~page~key composite keys but is not called by any live code path — the current lookup path filters the Preference list by ApplicationName / Pagename instead. It is dead but compiled code.*
• Save() declares an unused System.Xml.XmlTextWriter local (PrefWriter), and its trailing clsLogTrace.MethodEnd() call is unreachable because it follows Return result.*

Constraints and usage notes

• Callers must call Save() after any Add / Remove / Clear / Delete call, or the mutation is lost at the end of the request (BR-PRES-019).
• Callers cannot rely on Save()'s boolean return value to detect success — it always returns False. Persistence failure is signaled only by a thrown ApplicationException.
• Non-web (desktop) callers must set OverridePage before relying on page-scoped preferences, otherwise the page key is derived by reflecting the call stack, which is brittle to refactors.*

Note: Statements marked with * were inferred from code structure, naming conventions, or contextual evidence where direct confirmation was not available in source artifacts.

Sources

• SAIF.Presentation/clsPreferences.vb