Root and child components

An item type is composed of components: a root component and any number of child components, which are optional.

A root component is the first or only level of an l item type. An item type consists of both system- and user-defined attributes. Internally, the most basic item type contains only one component.

A child component is an optional second level of an item type. Each child component is directly associated with the level preceding it. The following figure shows the diagram of the IBM® Content Manager meta-model. It shows root and child components and their relationships. The diagram also shows links, references, resource items, and resource objects.

Figure 1. The IBM Content Manager meta-model: A logical view.
Content Manager model described in the text.

The following figure shows an example of a data model for an insurance application. The policy is the root component and the claim, police report, and damage estimate are the child components.

Figure 2. Components hierarchy
Item hierarchy described in the text.

For more information about IBM Content Manager data modeling concepts, see the SItemTypeCreationICM sample.