Properties overview

Some of the behaviors of properties are as follows:

• Properties are based on a property template that you create by running the Property Template wizard. You can then assign the property to one or more classes where it becomes a property of that class and of each new instance of that class.
• When a property is assigned to a document class, new documents, including each new document version, based on that class inherit the property. Each document or document version can potentially be assigned a different value for the property. In other words, a property of the class does not hold a single value that automatically applies to all members of a version series.
• Properties hold values. For example, a Customer Name property might have the value John Smith.
• Properties have a data type that defines the kind of data the property can contain. For example, an integer type property can hold only a value that is an integer.
• Properties are either system (or built-in) properties or custom properties. System properties are defined during installation. Custom properties are created after installation by the system administrator, by an application, or (depending on the exposed features of the application) by users. For more information about the custom properties that are added or modified by add-on features, see Add-on features.
• Properties can be marked as hidden, providing a hint to a client application not to display the property to users.
• You can create association properties so that two properties in two different classes are associated in some defined way.
• You can specify whether a property value is required or optional.
• Properties can be editable or read-only.
• Setting or modifying a property typically requires some access right to the object to which the property belongs. However, properties contain a modification access mask that you can optionally use to assign additional security to individual properties. For more information, see Property modification access.
• You can view or modify the properties of an object by using the object property sheet.
• Assigning a property to a class increases the row size in the underlying database table; however, the method used to allocate the space in the row size varies depending on the database software you use. For example, some databases allocate the maximum length of the property at the time when you assign the property to a class. To avoid exceeding the row size allocate as little space as possible for the initial size of a string property. For more information, see Minimize database row sizes.