Overview

Display profile uses the following three types of merges to determine how to combine display profile documents:

replace

All the display profile objects defined in the higher priority document completely override the ones defined at the lower one. If the object does not exist in the lower priority document, it is added to the merge result (the object replaces the value in the merge results).

remove

The named object is removed from the merge up to this point (the object is removed from the merge results). It no longer exists in the display profile (but it can be re-introduced by another document to be merged). It can be redefined by a higher priority document.

fuse

The object from the lower priority document is combined with one from the higher priority document (the object is merged with the value in the merge results).

The exact meaning of each merge type depends on the display profile object they are applied to.

For channels and providers, fuse has special meaning. The channels themselves are not actually fused together. Rather, fuse indicates that the channel’s or provider’s properties should be combined. The replace semantic replaces the entire channel or provider, including all properties. The remove semantic removes the entire channel or provider from the merge up to that point.

The display profile <DisplayProfile> root node can also have merge semantics. The replace semantic means that all the DP objects defined in the higher priority document completely override the ones defined at the lower one. All merges up to that point are negated and the higher priority document is used as the new base for merging. The remove semantic indicates that all merge results up to the point of this document are to be discarded. The merge begins with the next display profile document found in the sorted set. As with channels and providers, the fuse semantic means that the contained objects (channels and providers) should be combined.

Atomic display profile properties (those that cannot contain other properties) cannot use the fuse semantic. This includes the String, Integer, Boolean, and Reference properties.

The set of properties for a channel consists of the channel’s properties plus the channel’s provider’s properties plus the channel’s parent’s properties, and so on. You can think of this total set of properties as the channel’s single document properties. An implication of document merging is that the total set of properties for a document consists of the set union of the channel’s single document properties for all documents in the user’s merge set.