union doctype attribute with a registered table to prevent constant updates

sharkbob

This is the problem I have today.   Currently I have a doctype that has several related custom attributes:  provider_id,   provider_name,  provider_tin.   The problem is that provider_id never changes but the name and tin can change.   We literally have thousands of instances of documents with this doctype.    What I would like to do is remove the custom attributes that can change i.e. provider_name and provider_tin  and put them in a registered table that has provider_id as it's key.

This would mean that I would have to remove the custom attributes from the doctype and the existing instances of the doctypes.  Is this possible?

Assuming it is possible, the next step would be to customize my search and objectlist screens so this information is always current rather than having to sweep the docbase to update changes to provider_name and provider_tin  by using a union with my registered cross reference table.   I suspect that this is a common problem and someone has come up with a best practice to solve this problem.

Thanks in advance

Lawrence

mszurap

Hi,

One solution could be to use value mapping for the attributes which are changing it's "display" values. In this way you store provider_id three times, but the value mapping is stored in the Documentum Data Dictionary and the lookup is done automatically on Webtop. Using DQL might return the "raw" value of the id, not the lookup value.

The second solution could be to create two dummy attributes, in which you don't store anything, but create a TBO and override it's doGetString method. There you can define that upon returning the value of the provider_name (for example) you get the value from a registered table using the provider_id. Using DQL might not return the value of these dummy attributes but in this case you can join your type with the registered table. I've not tried to override the doGetString method, so I would not bet on this, but it's worth a try.