You can replace the standard external user profile repository definition and create an entirely new profile repository definition file . To do this, use XML file combination to remove the existing item types. It is possible to remove or replace any tag within the definition file. If you remove or replace a top level tag such as the <item-descriptor name="user"> tag, you will remove or replace everything within that tag. This means that all the properties that other ATG modules add to the user item descriptor will be lost.
You must decide if you want to replace the entire definition file, or only parts of it. While you can replace the whole file, a better approach is to remove specific tables or properties and to append your own table and property definitions within the file. Once you have decided what parts of the file you want to change, you can place a file containing your changes in your configuration path at /atg/userprofiling/userProfile.xml. This removes all item-descriptors, tables, or properties of a specified name defined in the profile repository by other ATG modules.
For example, if you wanted to modify the userProfile.xml file by adding a property “position” and removing the property middleName, there is a good way and a bad way to accomplish this. If you remove the entire contactInfo item-descriptor or the dps_contact_info table, you’ll erase all the other properties belonging to these tags that you may want to keep. Here’s a bad example of how to modify the contactInfo information:
<!-- DPS userProfile.xml -->
<!—-Bad Example -->
<gsa-template>
<item-descriptor name="contactInfo" xml-combine="replace">
<table name="dps_contact_info">
<property name="firstName">
<property name="middleName">
<property name="lastName">
</table>
</item-descriptor>
</gsa-template>Instead, do the following:
<!-- DPS userProfile.xml --> <!-—Good Example --> <gsa-template> <item-descriptor name="contactInfo"> <table name="dps_contact_info"> <property name="firstName"> <property name="middleName" xml-combine="remove"> <property name="lastName"> <property name="position" xml-combine="append"> </table> </item-descriptor> </gsa-template>
For more information on XML file combination, see XML File Combination in the Nucleus: Organizing JavaBean Components chapter of the ATG Platform Programming Guide
