Ajith Prabhakar’s Weblog

Documentum Object support 2 types of Attributes

They are 

• Single Value Attributes
  Single Value properties are properties that can hold a single value at a time
  For  Eg: object_name   One object will have only a single name
• Repeated Attributes
  Repeated Attributes are properties that can hold multiple values
  For Eg: Keywords  A object can have multiple keywords attached to it

Documentum Uses Underlying database to save the meta-data. ie the Attribute information, Each attribute type in Documentum essentially has 2 tables in the database. One for saving the single value attribute and another one to save repeated attribute.  Documentum uses the following naming convension for the tables,  object_name_s for single value attribute table and object_name_rfor repeated attribute table where object_name is the the name of object type. for example for the dm_sysobject the tables names would me dm_sysobject_s and dm_sysobject_r

Repeated Property

Each property has a column in the _r table with I_position where I_position determines which location it belongs to 
eg:   if my_object has 2 repeated attributes given_names and location the my_object_r will have following columns r_object_id, i_postion, given_names, location
 

Single Value Attribute
Single Value Attribute is defined as each attribute has single column in the _s table
eg: if my_object has two single attributes surname and sex r_object_id, surname, sex  columns in the my_object_s will be r_object_id, surname, sex

View :- Each object type has 2 views
_SV & SP – All Single value attributes in conjunction with all super types
_RV & RP – All Repeated value attributes in conjunction with all super types
eg: if my_object is extending dm_document views will have all the single / repeated attributes of dm_sysobject,dm_document and my_object (dm_document will be added only if any new attributes has been added to it ) by default dm_document does not have any single attribute or repeated attribute