What does the Alias attribute of FieldRef do?

Question

MSDN is less than descriptive:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms442728.aspx

Alias - Optional Text.

Per a user request, I was trying to rename the field name that shows in the header of a custom view. So I changed the ViewFields section in schema.xml to look like this:

<ViewFields>
  <FieldRef Name="DocIcon" Alias="Form" DisplayName="Form">
  </FieldRef>
  <FieldRef Name="Employee" Alias="Name" DisplayName="Name">
  </FieldRef>
  <FieldRef Name="Modified">
  </FieldRef>
  <FieldRef Name="Editor">
  </FieldRef>
</ViewFields>

I redeployed my solution and... no change. The original DisplayNames (Type and Employee in this case) were still shown.

But now, I'm curious. What is the Alias attribute supposed to do?

Answer 1

Hello,

From what I understand the Alias field property is only used in data retrieval service adapters, ie under the Microsoft.SharePoint.Dsp namespace.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.dsp.field.alias.aspx

.b