3 Working with Characteristics

A characteristic is a data element that you intend to associate with Oracle Communications Unified Inventory Management (UIM) specification.

You use characteristics to add additional attributes to specification beyond those that are available by default for the various specification types. A characteristic can be associated to multiple entity specifications. When an entity instance is created in UIM from a specification, that entity includes the characteristics defined at the specification level.

In Design Studio, characteristics are identified as such by a tag applied to the data element. The tag is applied automatically when you create a characteristic explicitly. You can also create a simple data element and add tag it later as a characteristic.

Characteristics have some capabilities not shared by other data elements, including the ability to specify validity dates and the ability to populate drop-down lists dynamically.

When working with characteristics, see the following topics:

• Creating Characteristics

• Adding Characteristics to Specifications

• Populating Drop-Down Lists Dynamically

• Overriding Default Values of Characteristics in Entity Specifications

• Specifying Validity Dates for Characteristics

• About Masks

• Data Schema Editor Characteristics Tab