Ownable Resource Security › Field Descriptor Table (FDT) Record › Modifying the FDT

Modifying the FDT

You can have one or more reasons for updating or modifying the FDT. These reasons can be divided into two main categories:

• Modifying Existing Fields

  You want to modify an existing field to change its characteristics. For example, if you want to change the displayed title of a field shown when listing a user, you would enter:

  TSS REP(FDT)  FDTNAME(FIELD1)  DISPLAY('USER FIELD1')
  

• Defining New Fields

  You want to use fields to define installation information (by user ACID) that can be manipulated or extracted by application programs. Applications can extract and update this information using the Application Interface.

  Once defined, you can add these fields to ACIDs using the TSS commands. You can ADD, REMOVE, REPLACE, or LIST the defined data the same way you would with fields predefined by CA Top Secret.

  You can add these fields to a profile ACID to create a role based profile that can be added to any user. The extract process returns field data from the first connected profile if the field is not found in the user record of the ACID. Use the FIRST keyword when adding the new profile to an ACID to ensure it is the first profile/group found in the list.

Note: The Security File is structured to provide CA Top Secret with the best performance possible. However, a wide use of user-defined data can cause a situation where the original CA Top Secret information becomes a fraction of the total Security File causing an unbalanced I/O as well as a misuse of storage and CPU. You should re-examine the Security File size according to the amount of user data that the file is expected to hold.