Attributes
Last updated: July 20, 2023
An attribute is a single property of an object, or the property of a relationship between objects. An object or object relationship is described by the values of its attributes. The attribute serves as the definition for a value type, whereas a property is an instance of the attribute and its value for the object.
Attributes serve the purposes of:
- Describing the identified object or the relationship. Such descriptive attributes may include the title for a document, the unit of measure for an item, or identifying the relationship between a child item and a parent item such as the quantity of a child item being used in the parent item.
- Controlling applied business logic and user interaction to the manipulation of metadata about the identified object. Such controlling attributes may include the status for document as approved, or the status for a physical item as obsolete.
- Depending on the control conditions set for a specific attribute value, applied business logic may control the way in which the business logic and/or user-interface behave.
- In the example above, if the document control attribute has been set to "approved", business logic may disallow change to the document and force the creation of a new revision for the document.
- Setting indexing criteria and parameters for the object or object relationships to allow search and finding of the object or object relationship. Such indexing attributes may include descriptive and controlling attributes.
See also OBJECT, OBJECT IDENTIFICATION, and CHARACTERISTICS.