System Overview › CA Ideal Environment Components › Datadictionary Considerations for CA Ideal

Datadictionary Considerations for CA Ideal

Site administrators should use the following guidelines when using Datadictionary with CA Ideal:

• Avoid required relationship types.

  We recommend that you do not define any relationship involving an entity-type that CA Ideal maintains as required. When CA Ideal attempts to create a new entity-occurrence, the required user-specified relationship occurrences cannot be supplied since they are unknown to CA Ideal. No further processing is allowed until the relationship is satisfied. The administrator can model user-defined relationship types between entity-types in the dictionary, but must make them optional (non-required) when they involve the entity-types SYSTEM, PROGRAM, PANEL, REPORT, and PERSON.

• Avoid using batch or online Datadictionary to maintain CA Ideal entity‑occurrences.

  Do not attempt to use Datadictionary (batch or online) to maintain entity-occurrences or relationship occurrences that CA Ideal maintains; for example, entity-occurrences SYSTEM, PROGRAM, PANEL, REPORT, and PERSON; and relationship definitions PER-ATZ-AUTH, PER-SYS-ACCESS, SYS‑LIB-RESIDE, SYS-PGM-CONTAIN, PGM-DVW-USE, PGM-PNL-USE, PGM‑RPT-PRODUCE, and PGM-PGM-CALL. The administrator can maintain entity-occurrences using Datadictionary, of any entity types that model other resources at the site, but the administrator should never tamper with those occurrences that CA Ideal creates.

  Also, the administrator should never tamper with relationship occurrences or with intersection data between occurrences that CA Ideal creates since these often contain CA Ideal control information.

  Three exceptions are:

  • Occurrences of PERSON and SYSTEM can be initially defined, if necessary, using Datadictionary rather than using CA Ideal. However, to make such occurrences valid for CA Ideal use, the CA Ideal administrator must EDIT SYSTEM and USER (PERSON) definitions using CA Ideal commands to enter additional information that CA Ideal requires.
  • The administrator can use Datadictionary directly to maintain text records.
  • Dataviews can be related to systems using the SYS-DVW-USE relationship.
• Avoid conflict with CA Ideal internal naming conventions.

  When using Datadictionary (batch or online), avoid conflicts with CA Ideal internal naming conventions. PROGRAM, PANEL, and REPORT entity‑occurrences created by CA Ideal begin with $I. Therefore, users are advised not to create any occurrences beginning with a $I.

• Use entity types consistently.

  CA Ideal uses the entity types PROGRAM and SYSTEM with specific meanings: A PROGRAM represents a compilable unit of an application that can run alone or can call or be called by other programs (for example, a subprogram). A SYSTEM is a collection of related application PROGRAMs and is also related to its USERs who are developers, end users, and so on. There is no restriction on the use of these entity-types elsewhere in the dictionary; however, be sure to consider their special meaning to CA Ideal.

  Note: CA Ideal does not use the Datadictionary entity types MEMBER and PLAN.

• No entity-occurrence passwords.

  Datadictionary allows any entity-occurrence to be assigned a password. Do not specify entity-occurrence passwords (four-character PASSWORD attribute) for entity-occurrences that CA Ideal is to access. For example, if you create PERSON entity-occurrences with Datadictionary and assign them entity-occurrence passwords, CA Ideal cannot access them. Do not confuse the restrictions of not using entity-occurrence passwords with the 12-character signon password (PASS-WORD attribute of the PERSON entity type) that CA Ideal supports, that is the same attribute CA Ideal displays on the USER definition fill-in.

• Do not change LOCK attribute on CA Ideal entity-occurrences.

  All entity-occurrences that CA Ideal creates have a LOCK attribute value of 1. Do not change this attribute.