Multivalued CoS Attributes

When you specify the merge-schemes qualifier, the generated CoS attribute can be multivalued in two ways:

• With indirect or classic CoS, the specifier attributes in target entries can be multivalued. In this case, each value determines a template, and the value from each template is part of the generated value.

• Multiple CoS definition entries of any type can contain the same attribute name in their cosAttribute. In this case, if all definitions contain the merge-schemes qualifier, the generated attribute contains all values computed by each definition.

The two situations can occur together and define even more values. However, in all cases, duplicate values will only be returned one time in a generated attribute.

In the absence of the merge-schemes qualifier, the cosPriority attribute of the template entry is used to determine a single value among all templates for the generated attribute. This scenario is described in the next section.

The merge-schemes qualifier never merges a “real” value that is defined in the target with generated values from the templates. The merge qualifier is independent of the override qualifier. All pairings are possible, and the behaviors implied by each are complimentary. Also, the qualifiers can be specified in any order after the attribute name.

When there are multiple CoS definitions for the same attribute, the definitions must all have the same override and merge qualifiers. When different pairs of qualifiers occur in CoS definitions, one of the combinations is selected arbitrarily among all definitions.