Set up or flag the field of attribute as mandatory or optional

[Former Member]

Hi,

I’d like to know if it’s possible to either set up or flag the attribute fields as either mandatory or optional. Is it possible with Java API?

Thanks a lot.

[Former Member]

Hi Thomas,

You have setting in the Console called Required that you can flag YES or NO to indicate whether the field is required or not. However, this option setting does not actually enforce anything as of now. In future releases of 2006, there is a proposal to enforce this.

For now, the way I worked around is:

1. I flag the field required YES in the console if I do NOT want NULL values in the field. (for the sake of setting).

2. Then, in data manager I write validation expression using IS_NOT_NULL function on those fields so that manual entry does not allow NULL values. It throws an error.

3. Import Manager however cannot retrieve the validation expressions. So, you can load null values in a field that has the expression written. You will identify these if you manually run validation after the loads.

4. <b>JAVA API</b> lets you enforce this when you are using API programs to post the data. You can write such that if the consoel is set to YES, then do not let NULL values to post.

I have some information around requried in fields in my blog:

/people/savitri.sharma/blog/2005/09/22/tips-and-hints-for-new-mdm-users

Is this helpful?

Good luck

Savi

[Former Member]

Hi Savitri,

Thanks for your confirmation.

Thomas