DEMO_01 gains a GRADE column carrying MINVAL .A with MAXVAL .C, so the demo table
can show a range written in special missings: .B is inside it and .D is outside.
The clip's range-rule scene is rebuilt around the order - the same special missing
fails AMOUNT (MINVAL 1, below every number), passes SCORE (MAXVAL 100, below the
ceiling), and in GRADE .B is taken while .D is refused.
The captions from the previous take claimed a range rule steps aside for a
missing value, which the engine no longer does, so they are corrected along with
the scene.
DEMO_01 no longer carries a NOTNULL rule for ID: it is the table's buskey, and
Data Controller applies NOT NULL to a primary key by itself, so the demo now
shows the behaviour rather than a rule that duplicates it.
The clip's range-rule scene showed a special missing being rejected by MINVAL.
It now shows the missing accepted in both AMOUNT (MINVAL 1) and SCORE (MAXVAL
100), and a real number out of range - 0, then 200 - rejected.
Two captions were also wrong and are corrected: the period in a special missing
is optional (the demo's own row 2 holds .a), and ID is NOT NULL because it is the
primary key.
Every beat now says what it shows and why the rule behaves as it does, so the
colour of a cell never has to be inferred. The spec appends a caption track as
it runs - a label, the text, and a wall-clock stamp per beat - and the encoder
turns consecutive entries into subtitle cues, calibrated against the one thing
measurable in the video (the amber SOFTREGEX warning cell appearing).
The timestamp is taken inside a cy.then(): Cypress evaluates a command's
arguments when the command is queued, so Date.now() passed to cy.writeFile
directly gives every mark the same value - the moment the spec body ran.
Two beats also gained room so their caption can be read: the opening grid hold,
and the DIFF hold before the staged screen. A mark with empty text clears the
caption while the clip moves between screens.
The clip reloaded the app halfway through, because the second half began with a
cy.visit - which reads as the table refreshing for no reason. It is now a single
session: the table is opened once, every rule scene is played on row 1 and each
value is put back, the real change is submitted, and the review screens are
reached through the app's own navigation. Nothing reloads.
Because the rule scenes are put back first, the DIFF carries only the two cells
the clip is about, and the spec asserts that: RATING and LAST_REVIEWED carry the
changed-cell marker and the other cells do not.
The staged-data screen gets a beat of its own (view staged data, held long
enough to read), since that is the row the approval acts on - and its assertion
checks text that only exists on that screen, because asserting 'Staged Data'
would have been satisfied by the button that was just clicked.
Also shortens the correction beats, which do not need a study pause.
The clip hovered a changed DIFF cell with trigger('mouseover') and then asserted
contain.text on the tooltip. Clarity reveals a tooltip through CSS :hover, which
a synthetic event does not activate, so the tooltip stayed visibility: hidden
while the assertion passed anyway - the text is in the DOM either way. The
recording therefore showed no previous value at all.
hoverDiffCell now moves the real mouse (cypress-real-events, already a
dependency) and asserts the tooltip's computed visibility and opacity alongside
its text, so a take that does not actually display it fails. The first real
mouse move after another action can be swallowed, hence the repeat.
The holds are cut again as well - the recording is 82s where it was 101s - since
the finished clip is played at 1.43x on the way out.
A SOFTSELECT/HARDSELECT whose rule value is a library.member.column reference
takes its list from that column, and getdata.sas builds it with cats() and then
orders it by the column itself. The mock sent the raw stored value instead, so a
numeric special missing reached the client in its period form (".a") rather than
as the bare letter cats() produces, and it sat in row order rather than below
every number. It now does both, so a dropdown sourced from a column reads the
way the real one does.
DEMO_01 gains a STATUS column carrying a SOFTSELECT over its own column, with
one row holding a special missing, so the dropdown can be demonstrated listing
that missing alongside the ordinary values.
The clip spec records that beat, hovers both changed cells on the review screen
so the value each replaced is on screen, and cuts the waits that were only
letting a page or a modal settle.
The mock's APPROVE_TABLE branch called loadTableData(), which is not defined in
that service's scope - the loader it defines is mpeLoadTableData(). Every ACCEPT
therefore failed with "No webout was returned by job", and it went unnoticed
because the demo clip stopped at the DIFF. With the loader corrected, ACCEPT
applies the load to the base table, writes the MPE_REVIEW / MPE_SUBMIT /
MPE_DATALOADS entries and lands on the history page.
DEMO_01 row 2 now carries a special missing (RATING .a) so a demo can show one
special missing changing into another - the DIFF compares the two rather than
treating either as a blank.
The clip spec gains the two beats the companion post describes: the approver
opens the submission from the approvals list, switches the DIFF between
formatted and unformatted (15JAN2026 / 24121 on the date9. column), accepts,
and the history shows the change APPROVED. Both DIFF beats scroll the table
right, because the changed columns sit off the edge of a 1280-wide frame. The
key entered in the NOTNULL scene is now a value that is not already a key, since
the editor checks the keys before it checks the rules and would report the
duplicate instead of the invalid value.
A special missing is NULL as far as a SAS NOT NULL (or primary key)
constraint is concerned - an insert carrying one is rejected with an
integrity constraint error (_NM0001_ / _PK0001_) - but the frontend
NOTNULL rule passed it, so the editor accepted a value the target table
refuses. getdata merges a physical NOT NULL constraint into a NOTNULL
rule, so the mismatch was reachable on any table with the constraint.
The rule now fails a special missing on a numeric column. A single
letter stays valid on a character column, where there is no special
missing concept.
Also updates the DEMO_01 clip script: the NOTNULL scene now shows a
blank AND a special missing both rejected, with a number accepted.
The recording spec paused for a fixed couple of seconds after each edit and
trusted that the rule engine had finished. It has not: the engine flags a cell
(htInvalid) shortly after the edit commits, so a blind pause can land before
the red appears. In the first take the blanked NOTNULL key never showed as
invalid on screen, which is the whole point of that scene.
Every beat now asserts the expected state - flagged for the rejections
(AB, 1a, a blank key, a special missing below MINVAL), unflagged for the
accepted ones - and only then holds. The hold therefore always rests on the
settled outcome, and the clip is self-checking: if the engine stops flagging
one of these states the recording fails instead of quietly showing the wrong
thing.
Verified against the app: blanking ID gives the cell htInvalid; AB and 1a in
RATING are flagged; a single letter in RATING, a special missing in ID and a
special missing under MAXVAL all settle clean.
The mock's DIFF service normalised numeric values with Number(), so a SAS
special missing (".b") became NaN and was emitted as null - the value vanished
from the DIFF screen even though the staged data held it.
Real Data Controller writes the DIFF with missing=STRING, whose format maps ._
and .a-.z to a string and leaves a bare "." as null (see the bart format in
mp_jsonout.sas). The mock now mirrors that, so a special missing survives into
the DIFF. Special missings are numeric-only, so the guard sits in the numeric
branch of normVal.
Also adds cypress/clips/special-missings-clip.cy.ts - the recording script for
the companion demo clip. It lives outside cypress/e2e so the default spec
pattern does not pick it up in CI.
dc