Defining Dictionary-wide Informative Notes Before Activation

See Overview of Informative Notes and Attributes for general information about Informative Notes. You must define Informative Note Attributes and associate them with a dictionary before you can define dictionary-wide Informative Notes for the dictionary; see Defining Informative Note Attributes and Making Informative Note Attributes Available for Dictionaries and Record Types.

This section describes adding dictionary-wide Informative Notes to the pre-dictionary tables, using the TMS API. This approach enables you to validate the notes you add by running Activation. You can also add dictionary-wide Informative Notes directly to the production tables by using the Define Dictionaries window (see Defining Dictionary-wide Informative Notes). The direct approach skips the Activation process.

Dictionary-wide Informative Notes serve one of two purposes in TMS, depending on the note type you choose:

• Notes of type Standard and URL cascade down to that dictionary's data. By defining a dictionary-wide Informative Note, you also assign that note to every data record within the dictionary.

• Dictionary version numbers enable you to specify which version of a dictionary you have loaded into the database. Dictionary versions are based upon the attribute Dictionary Version, which is derivable. See Defining a Dictionary Version Informative Note.

You cannot use the Workflow note type for dictionary-wide Informative Notes.

You can create dictionary-wide Informative Notes for either base or virtual dictionaries, but the dictionary must be active.

To add a dictionary-wide Informative Note to the pre-dictionary tables:

1. Connect to SQL*Plus as the load user.
2. Run the API procedure tms_user_mt_info.insertInfo.

   You must specify a pInfoNoteType of 'D' to create a dictionary-wide Informative Note.