User-defined data types

An XML file can be used to import any number of new data types into the PPM system. The following example file creates a new Costs data type (internal name COST) with a base unit of Euros (EUR) and the additional unit of Dollars (USD) with a corresponding conversion factor.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<!DOCTYPE datatypelist SYSTEM 'userdefdatatypes.dtd'>

<datatypelist>

...

<!-- Data type: Costs -->

<datatype name="COST">

<description language="de" name ="Kosten"/>

<description language="en" name ="Costs"/>

<basescale name="EUR">

<description language="de" name="EUR"/>

<description language="en" name="EUR"/>

</basescale>

<scale name="USD" factor="0.9">

<description language="de" name="US Dollar"/>

<description language="en" name="US Dollars"/>

</scale>

</datatype>

...

</datatypelist>

Document type definition of the XML file for the definition of new PPM data types (file userdefdatatypes.dtd):

ppm_customizing_4

Import and export of user-defined data types

You perform the import and export of user-defined data types by executing the command runppmconfig with the option -datatypes on the PPM server computer (see PPM Operation Guide). When importing, the internal name (datatype name XML tag) of the data type to be imported is checked. If a data type with the same name already exists in the PPM system, this data type is not imported and a corresponding message is output.

Once imported, user-defined data types cannot subsequently be deleted from the PPM system. It is possible to overwrite their definition only by specifying the -overwrite option in the runppmconfig command line program.