Define attributes for configuration objects

If you click a configuration object in an explorer, an attribute window will be displayed on the right side of the screen. Attributes displayed in black text can be edited. Attributes displayed in grey text cannot be edited. Click an attribute to display instructional text at the bottom of the screen providing useful information about the attribute. This information will help you understand and define a value for the attribute.

To define an attribute in the attribute window, click the cell to the right of the attribute field that you want to edit. Fields can be edited in different ways:

Click in an attribute’s cell and enter text directly in the cell.
Click the Drop-Down button to select an item in a drop-down menu.
Click the Browse button to open an editor or dialog box.

You must click the Save Save_Expand button in the Alfabet Expand toolbar to save your changes.

The attribute fields displayed may depend on the values entered for other fields. For example, when defining a custom property , the fields available will depend on the Property Type attribute that you define for the custom property. In this case, the attribute window will be automatically updated to show the relevant attributes.
A validation mechanism checks for correct syntax when defining the Name attribute for most configuration objects. The technical name of a configuration object may not begin with an empty space nor include any of the following special characters: \ / * ? ' > < | ' :
If you change the name of a configuration object, the name will be correctly updated during design time in other configuration objects, like, for example, the class setting referencing the changed object.
Because an unambiguous identification of configuration object is required to support the parallel connection of Alfabet Expand to the Alfabet database, a unique key constraint has been set for the Name attribute of configuration objects in Alfabet Expand. If two existing configuration objects have the same name in the Alfabet meta-model, the name of one of the objects will be changed automatically during migration to a new version of Alfabet. A message about the change will be written to the migration log file.
If a configuration object requires an XML definition, the syntax specified in the XML editor will be validated when the XML editor is closed.