Managing Web Services › Objects

Objects

CA SDM treats each entity, such as a contact or an issue, as an object. These high-level objects are defined in majic (.maj) and mod (.mod) files on the CA SDM server in the following directory:

/bopcfg/majic

Customized objects are defined in the following directory:

/site/mods/majic

Objects are essentially high-level wrappers around a database table.

An object’s type (sometimes referred to as factory) defines the object. For example, request objects belong to the ‘cr’ type. Each object’s type is defined by the “OBJECT” declaration in a majic file.

Note: All objects shipped with CA SDM are enumerated in the CA SDM Technical Reference Guide.

An object has attributes, which are essentially columns in a database table (do not confuse these with XML attributes). Web Services offers many methods to retrieve values for attributes. Many methods require you to name attributes for setting or retrieving values. You must use the attribute name assigned in the majic or mod file that defines the object, which can be different from the actual database name. Client sites can add additional attributes as a customization.

Note: For a list of all the attributes for each object, see the CA SDM Technical Reference Guide.

Web Services uniquely identifies an object by its handle, which is a string value of the form objectType:ID, where objectType is the object’s type (factory) name, and ID is a unique value. The ID value matches that of the ‘id’ attribute found in every CA SDM object. Because the ‘id’ attribute is almost always indexed in the DBMS, using the ID portion of the object handle is especially valuable for forming efficient queries. Each object, regardless of its type, stores this value in an object attribute named “persistent_id”.

Note: In prior releases, the ID portion of the handle was always a string of integers. In Unicenter Service Desk r11.0 and later, the ID portion may also be the string representation of a UUID, typically 32 characters.

The following information lists the object and factory names of the entities that use UUIDs:

Handles are persistent; a handle representing a particular object is always unique for its lifetime, even across database migrations. Clients may want to take advantage of this persistence when working with fairly static objects, for example, Status or Contact Types.

Object handles are the key to using CA SDM Web Services. Many methods, especially those that update data, require handles. Most methods that return object data also include the object’s handle.