Defining attributes

Attributes are characteristics or specifications that define the corresponding system entities.

For example, a computer's attributes may include:

  • Type of CPU
  • Hard drive size in GB
  • Number of USB ports

You can define a set of allowed values for attributes; for example, in the context of the CPU type, you can define the allowed values as AMD, Celeron, and Pentium.

Enterprises create and manage system attributes by first defining the following master attribute data:

  • Attribute domains
  • Attribute groups
  • Attributes and allowed attribute values.
Note: You assign attributes and derived attributes to categories, but you cannot assign values to derived attributes. Only the decimal and integer data type is supported as a valid value for derived attributes.
The following figure depicts a branch of a typical attribute domain, in this case, the item attribute domain.
branch_typicalattributedomain