Configure asset attribute drop down list with lots of values

Janette Wong (71●13●11) | asked Jan 25 '12, 10:57 p.m.

Hello,

I have a few questions on configuring "drop down list" for an asset attribute in RAM 7.5.1:

1. Is it possible to provide a list of values and designate one of them as the default? I know how to add values, but don't know how to make one of them the default.

2. Is there a limit to the # of values I can add?

3. What if I have a large # of values, in the order of a hundred or more. It can be very un-user friendly to display a drop down list with a hundred plus values to choose from. Does RAM provide an alternative type of GUI (e.g. a tree of values that can be expanded, much like the values in a category schema) to display available/enumerated values when the # of values is large?

4. Is there an "easy" (i.e. batch) way of configuring a large # of enumerated values or is typing them in one by one the only way?

thanks or any hints/tips!

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Rich Kulp (3.6k●3●8) | answered Jan 26 '12, 9:38 a.m.
FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER

Hi,

If you have that many predefined values it sounds like you should have
this as a classification tree instead of a single multi-valued
attribute. It sounds more like this would be classifying the asset in a
certain way instead of just assigning an attribute value. In fact if you
have that many entries in your list you should probably restructure as a
hierarchy in categorization instead of a flat list attribute to allow
easier navigation and understanding of the information.

--
Rich Kulp
Rational Asset Manager developer

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Janette Wong (71●13●11) | answered Jan 26 '12, 9:55 a.m.

Hi,

If you have that many predefined values it sounds like you should have
this as a classification tree instead of a single multi-valued
attribute. It sounds more like this would be classifying the asset in a
certain way instead of just assigning an attribute value. In fact if you
have that many entries in your list you should probably restructure as a
hierarchy in categorization instead of a flat list attribute to allow
easier navigation and understanding of the information.

--
Rich Kulp
Rational Asset Manager developer

Thanks Rich, although what I'm attempting to do really has nothing to do with classification. In fact, it's simply identifying the "owners" of an SOA service. Every service has different types of owners -- business, development, operational. It happens that my organization has many departments (in the order of hundreds) that the submitter can choose from. I know what you mean by using category schemas as I've configured category schemas for classifications such as by subject domain and technical runtime environment. So am I right to assume, given your reply, that what I asked above canNOT be easily done? If I use category schemas to solve my problem, I know I can work around it, but I think I'm using the schemas as a workaround.

Thanks

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Janette Wong (71●13●11) | answered Jan 26 '12, 9:57 a.m.

Hi,

If you have that many predefined values it sounds like you should have
this as a classification tree instead of a single multi-valued
attribute. It sounds more like this would be classifying the asset in a
certain way instead of just assigning an attribute value. In fact if you
have that many entries in your list you should probably restructure as a
hierarchy in categorization instead of a flat list attribute to allow
easier navigation and understanding of the information.

--
Rich Kulp
Rational Asset Manager developer

By the way, is it possible to designate a value as the default? This question is in fact quite independent of the question of the attribute having a large list of possible values. I just lumped them together, that's all. In fact, I have another asset attribute that has a rather short list (just a few) enumerated values and one of them I want to designate as the default.

thanks

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Eric Bordeau (276●3●2) | answered Jan 26 '12, 10:26 a.m.
JAZZ DEVELOPER

By the way, is it possible to designate a value as the default? This question is in fact quite independent of the question of the attribute having a large list of possible values. I just lumped them together, that's all. In fact, I have another asset attribute that has a rather short list (just a few) enumerated values and one of them I want to designate as the default.

thanks

Attributes that have a predefined list of values currently can not have a default. There is an enhancement open for this: https://jazz.net/jazz02/resource/itemName/com.ibm.team.workitem.WorkItem/44338

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Rich Kulp (3.6k●3●8) | answered Jan 26 '12, 1:53 p.m.
FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER

Hi,

I would still think of it as a classification. You are classifying who
the owner is. That is similar to other usages of classification that
I've seen, such as what Marketing division an asset is for, such as in
Software->European->Germany You would have some similar classification
for owners. I'm sure the departments have some sort of structural
hierarchy to allow easy selection. Otherwise hundreds of entries in a
flat list is totally unusable. No user would have a clue as to how to
select which is required.

--
Rich Kulp
Rational Asset Manager developer

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Janette Wong (71●13●11) | answered Jan 26 '12, 2:26 p.m.

Hi,

I would still think of it as a classification. You are classifying who
the owner is. That is similar to other usages of classification that
I've seen, such as what Marketing division an asset is for, such as in
Software->European->Germany You would have some similar classification
for owners. I'm sure the departments have some sort of structural
hierarchy to allow easy selection. Otherwise hundreds of entries in a
flat list is totally unusable. No user would have a clue as to how to
select which is required.

--
Rich Kulp
Rational Asset Manager developer

Hi Rich, is there any easy/faster way to set up the category schema than manually typing all the entries in?

Also, is it true in a category schema that a user can only select a child node? In the example I cited (i.e. to identify the "owner" of an SOA service asset), then one can expect the user to be very specific. I have another use case though... it has to do with identifying the potential or intended consumers of the SOA service. Especially for "potential consumers", the user may not be able to be so specific. e.g. The user (SOA service asset submitter) may just want to pinpoint an area within my organization and say that area is a potential consumer, whereas in identifying the owner of the service, the submitter can precisely say the owner is a specific department.

Thanks

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Rich Kulp (3.6k●3●8) | answered Jan 26 '12, 4:08 p.m.
FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER

Hi,

No, the schema needs to be entered thru the editor. 7.5.1 has a vastly
improved editor over 7.5.0.2 and earlier.

Your criteria for selecting "owner" is very complicated and cannot be
handled thru a simple drop down list. We don't have a way of customizing
this for a customer to supply complicated javascript to walk the user
through the selection process. There is only static flat list or a
static tree (classifications).

--
Rich Kulp
Rational Asset Manager developer

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Gili Mendel (1.8k●5●6) | answered Jan 27 '12, 10:43 a.m.
JAZZ DEVELOPER

As Rich mentioned, the ui for entering elements on a schema have improved significantly. However, if you are to create a very large schema, and can generate it problematically, there is a non supported way to update the schema with a REST put - it is an XMI - (harder by hand then using the UI).

Go with the browser to <server>/internal/categorySchemas, you will get an atom feed for all the schema - look at the source. It will list the URL for each specific schema e.g., href="internal/categorySchemas/classif/assetlifecycleorhorizon.xmi"

You can do a GET on this, as well as PUT (and replace the schema with one you generated problematically).
------------------

I am not sure that I fully understood what you are trying to do, but consider to use a schema for the department's org chart, and use a policy to change the owner'/s of the asset by (assume you can query your user registry) which department owns it.

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Configure asset attribute drop down list with lots of values

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