Concepts: properties
Properties are the individual values that describe an object. Many properties
are created by the system when an object is created. You have full administrative control over creating, deleting, and assigning properties.
Some of the behaviors of properties are as follows:
- Properties are based on a property
template that you create by running
the Property Template wizard. You can then assign the property to
one or more classes where it becomes a property of that class and of each new instance of that class.
- When a property is assigned to a document class, new documents, including each new document
version, based on that class inherit the property. Each document or document version
can potentially be assigned a different value for the property. In other
words, a property of the class does not hold a single value that automatically
applies to all members of a version series.
- Properties hold values. For example, a Customer Name property might have the value
"John Smith."
- Properties have a data type that defines the kind of data the property can contain.
For example, an integer type property can hold only a value that is an integer.
- Properties are either system (or built-in) properties or custom properties. System properties are defined by the Content Engine installation program. Custom properties are created after installation by the system administrator, by an
application, or (depending on the exposed features of the application) by
users. Enterprise Manager displays system and custom properties differently.
See Add-on features for more information about the custom properties that are added or modified
by add-on features.
- Properties can be marked as hidden, providing a hint to an
application such as Workplace not to display the property to users. In Enterprise Manager, a hidden property is not listed
with other properties until you specifically ask the user interface to display
hidden properties.
- You can create association
properties so that two properties in two different classes are associated
in some defined way.
- You can specify whether a property value is required or optional.
- Properties can be editable or read-only.
- Setting or modifying a property typically requires some access right to
the object to which the property belongs. However, properties contain a modification
access mask that you can optionally use to assign additional security
to individual properties. See Property modification access for more information.
- You can view or modify
the properties of an object by using the object property sheet.
- Assigning a property to a class increases the row size in the underlying database table; however, the method used to allocate the space in the row size varies depending on the database software you use. For example, some databases allocate the maximum length of the property at the time when you assign the property to a class. To avoid exceeding the row size allocate as little space as possible for the initial size of a string property. See Minimize database row sizes for more information.