User-defined properties that correspond directly to a column in an SQL table must extend the class atg.adapter.gsa.GSAPropertyDescriptor. These classes must implement three additional methods:

rawToReal

This method converts from the database version of the property value to the property value as it is returned by RepositoryItem.getPropertyValue. For example, for you might convert the ID of an item into the item itself. You do not need to implement this method if the default behavior of the SQL repository is what you want.

realToRaw

This does the opposite of rawToReal. It converts from the version of the value given to setPropertyValue into the value given to the setObject call in JDBC. For example, if you have a property that specifies a reference to another item, you convert from the RepositoryItem to its ID.

For examples of these methods, see the source code for the atg.adapter.gsa.EnumPropertyDescriptor class at:

<ATG11dir>/DAS/src/Java/atg/adapter/gsa/EnumPropertyDescriptor

createDBPropertyEditor

This method is used by some reporting UIs or other tools which need to get the database value directly from SQL, but want to convert that value to or from a String representation. For example, you might perform a query against the Profile Repository, and receive the code value for an enumerated property. You can use the createDBPropertyEditor to convert the code value to its String representation for display in a UI, for instance. This method is like the method createPropertyEditor, but the property editor returned from createDBPropertyEditor should operate on the raw value (the value returned from the JDBC getObject call), not the real value (as returned by the RepositoryItem.getPropertyValue call).