Installation Guides › Policy Server Installation Guide › Installing the Administrative UI › Configure an ODBC Directory Configuration File › How to Describe an Administrator User Store › Managed Object Descriptions › Modify Attribute Descriptions

Modify Attribute Descriptions

An attribute stores information about a user, such as a telephone number or address. An entity's attributes determine its profile.

In the directory configuration file, attributes are described in ImsManagedObjectAttr elements. In the User Objectsection of the directory configuration file, you can do the following:

• Modify default attribute descriptions to describe your database attributes.
• Create new attribute descriptions by copying an existing description and modifying values as needed.

There is one ImsManagedObjectAttr element for each attribute in userprofiles. For example, an ImsManagedObjectAttr element may describe a user ID.

An ImsManagedObjectAttr element resembles the following:

<ImsManagedObjectAttr 
 physicalname="tblUsers.id" 
 displayname="User Internal ID" 
 description="User Internal ID" 
 valuetype="Number" 
 required="false" 
 multivalued="false" 
 maxlength="0" 
 hidden="false" 
 permission="READONLY">

Note: When you are using an Oracle database, note the following when you configure managed object attributes:

• Oracle databases are case-sensitive by default. The case of the attributes and table names in the directory configuration file must match the case of the attributes in Oracle.

  Be sure to specify a maximum length for String datatypes to prevent truncation.

The ImsManagedObjectAttr parameters are as follows.

• physicalname

  (Required)

  Specifies the physical name of the attribute, and it must contain one of the following:

  • The name and location where the value is stored.

    Format: tablename.columnname

    For example, when an attribute is stored in the id column in the tblUsers table, the physical name for that attribute is as follows:

    tblUsers.id

    You must define each table that contains an attribute in a Table element.

    Note: More information on table elements exists in Table elements.

  • A well-known attribute.

    A well-known attribute can represent a computed value. For example, you can use a well-known attribute to refer to an attribute that is computed by a custom operation.

• displayname

  (Required)

  Specifies a unique name for the attribute.

• description

  Provides the description of the attribute.

• valuetype

  Specifies the attribute's data type. It can be one of the following types:

  • String
  • Integer
  • Number
  • Date

  When an attribute's valuetype is incorrect, the Administrative UI queries may fail.

• required

  Indicates whether a value must be specified for the attribute, as follows:

  • True—Required
  • False—Optional (default)
• multi-valued

  Indicates whether the attribute can have multiple values, as follows:

  • True— An attribute can have multiple values.
  • False— An attribute can have only a single value (default).

  To store multi-valued attributes in a delimited list instead of in a multi-row table, you must define the delimiter character in the delimiter parameter.

  Make sure that the number of possible values and the length of each value that the column enables are sufficient.

• wellknown

  Provides the name of the well-known attribute.

  Well-known attributes have a specific meaning in CA Identity Manager.

  Format: %ATTRIBUTENAME%

  Note: When a custom operation is associated with an attribute, you must specify a well-known attribute.

• maxlength

  Determines the maximum size of the column.

• delimiter

  Defines the character that separates values when multiple values are stored in a single column.

  Important! The multivalued parameter must be set to true for the delimiter parameter to apply.

Note: The parameters are optional unless otherwise specified.