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):
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.