7 Managing Domains

Domains are used to manage referential integrity for multiple sets of nodes from different sources within the same Oracle Data Relationship Management application. A domain is a registered list of nodes of a common type which enables consistent management of these nodes in different versions within the same application. A domain provides a simple method for:

• Qualifying node names to ensure uniqueness

• Sharing identifying properties across versions

• Restricting certain types of changes such as renaming, promoting, demoting, and deleting nodes

• Assigning validations to ensure consistency of business rules regardless of version

Domain nodes are global nodes in a version with membership to a domain. Domain nodes cannot be renamed and cannot be removed from a domain after being assigned as a member. A domain node must have a unique name, regardless of domain assignment. The name of a domain node may represent the natural identifier of the node or may be qualified with a prefix or suffix to ensure referential integrity when used with nodes of different domains in the same version. The domain node description and inactive status/date are shared by a domain node in any version where it exists.