What Is a View?

The most important view is the user view, which contains the user attributes that are stored in Identity Manager and attributes that are read from accounts managed by Identity Manager. Some attributes in the user view are visible in the forms that are presented by the Identity Manager User and Administrator Interfaces. Other attributes are hidden or read-only. Hidden attributes are typically used by rules that derive other visible attributes or calculate field values.

For example, when creating a user (represented as a user view), an administrator enters a first and last name in the appropriate form fields on the Create User page. When the administrator saves the form, the system can calculate the user’s full name in a hidden field by concatenating the first and last name. This full name can then be saved to one or more resources, including Identity Manager. Once approved (where approval is required), the system converts the user view back into one or more objects in the Identity Manager repository and sends the view to the resources assigned to the user to create or update the user’s resource accounts.

View Attributes

A view is a collection of name/value pairs that are assembled from one or more objects stored in the repository, or read from resources. The value of a view attribute can be atomic such as a string, a collection such as a list, or reference to another object.

Any Boolean attribute can be omitted from a view. If omitted, the attribute is considered logically false.