Import / Export Feature Definitions - Introduction

• Supported Feature Data Types
• Feature Properties
• Feature General Properties
  • Feature Definition Translations
• Feature Data Properties
• Feature Remote Properties
• Feature Advanced Properties
• Feature Validation Properties
• Feature Hierarchy
  • Direct Feature Inheritance
  • Feature Identity Inheritance
  • Example of Feature Identity Inheritance

Supported Feature Data Types

When importing feature definitions, feature properties defined in the import data must be specified based on feature’s base data type.

Feature definition import supports the following feature data types:

Compound data type is considered as deprecated and Related Value feature is a special feature type which cannot be imported and has to be set up in Perfion manually.

Feature Properties

Features have several types of properties:

• General properties
• Data properties
• Remote properties
• Advanced properties
• Validation properties

Feature definition import allows creating and updating feature definitions, but it supports only a subset of feature properties. The table below shows which properties are supported.

Feature General Properties

Feature general properties define feature ID, unique name, caption, how and where feature will be shown in Perfion, etc. Refer to Figure 1 to see available feature properties.

Most of feature general properties can be used when importing feature definitions. The exception is feature ID, which cannot be created by user and will be automatically created by Perfion. One can, however, use feature ID when updating existing feature definitions.

Feature Definition Translations

Some of feature general data properties are language controlled and property values can be defined for several languages. The properties are:

Note, in Figure 1 one can see only some of translatable properties. Values for those properties are shown only in one language, which is chosen as default language in Perfion. In order to get access to all translatable properties one has to click a button with down arrow next to Caption property and the new window will open as shown in the Figure 2. From the new window one can define all translatable properties and also add translations for other languages.

Feature definition import fully supports translatable properties. It allows to import new features with translatable properties and also to update existing feature translatable properties.

Feature Data Properties

Feature data properties define how features will behave, how and where actual feature data will be stored, etc. Refer to Figure 1 to see available feature data properties.

There are many data properties and several can be chosen for the same feature. For example, feature can be selectable with sortable multi-value data and that data can also be localizable. The terminology used when describing features will be derived from data property names and therefore, the before mentioned feature, can be called “selectable” feature, “multi-value” feature, “localizable” feature, etc.

Feature definition import allows specifying all data properties when importing new features to Perfion. However, it does not support data property update for features which already exist in Perfion.

Not all feature data properties can be set for features with different data types. The table below shows which feature data types supports which feature data properties.

Feature Remote Properties

Remote properties allows changing feature type from normal feature to remote feature. One can also specify remote feature data source and other parameters.

The remote properties are not supported by feature definition import.

Feature Advanced Properties

Advanced feature properties allows further specifying various feature parameters in order to control how the feature will be handled in Perfion. Feature advanced properties are shown in Figure 3.

The feature definition import supports only one advanced feature property - Control Type. This property allows defining the feature data editor, which will be used in Perfion to visualize feature data. Feature definition import allows defining Control Type property for new features, but this property cannot be updated if the feature already exist in Perfion.

Feature Validation Properties

Feature validation properties allows specifying how feature data will be validated during data import or during data entry via Perfion GUI. An example of feature validation properties is shown in Figure 4.

Validation properties are not supported in feature definition import.

Feature Hierarchy

Features may have hierarchy and it determines how feature data will be handled in Perfion. Based on how feature hierarchy relations are set up in Perfion, there can be two types of data handling concepts used:

• Direct feature inheritance
• Feature identity inheritance

Different types of feature inheritance has influence how data will be handled in feature definition import.

Refer to Figure 5 to see how feature hierarchy looks like.

Direct Feature Inheritance

This type of inheritance does not have any particular meaning in how data will be handled in Perfion and it is only used to group features in Features pane. However, direct feature inheritance is used in feature definition import and allows child features to inherit all parent feature properties if child feature properties are not explicitly defined in import data. The direct feature inheritance will also be used in a similar way in GUI when creating new child features. The child feature’s data properties will be by default pre-set with values from parent feature.

There is a direct feature inheritance when:

• Selectable feature inherits from explicit feature
• Explicit feature inherits from selectable feature
• Explicit feature inherits from another explicit feature

There is no real connection between those two features which form a direct feature inheritance, e.g. these features are absolutely independent from each other.

It is not uncommon to use direct feature inheritance when creating feature categorization by using explicit features which do not have any purpose in data model. These features do not have any influence to other features, but they can be used to combine several other features “under” itself as its children and then use feature’s name as a categorizer label.

Feature Identity Inheritance

Feature identity inheritance is a special concept in Perfion which allows handling data in some special way if feature hierarchy path have multiple selectable features. Requirements and rules:

• There should be at least two selectable features in hierarchy path in order to create feature identity inheritance. Note, only features from independent hierarchy paths are used to determine if there is identity inheritance.
• It does not matter if selectable features in hierarchy path are adjacent to each other. For example, there could be several explicit features in feature’s hierarchy path in between selectable features. These explicit features will not affect identity inheritance status. Identity inheritance works like independent hierarchy tree of selectable features inside the actual feature hierarchy tree.
• There can be several paths in feature hierarchy, which may form feature identity inheritance. Some of those identity inheritances may have the same base feature (e.g. common to both paths) and in this case they will be considered as the same identity inheritance.
• When identity inheritance is formed, all child selectable features inherits all feature data values from their base selectable feature. This means that all child selectable features in identity inheritance will not have their own data. All feature data values will be saved only in identity inheritance base feature and child features will inherit base feature values. This is handled automatically in Perfion. For example, during feature data import if one selects to import data to selectable feature which is part of identity inheritance, the data will not be directly imported to that feature, but instead to identity inheritance base selectable feature to which that original selectable child feature belongs to.
• When identity inheritance is formed, all child selectable features inherits most of data properties from their base selectable feature. This means that all child selectable features in identity inheritance will have almost the same data properties like their base selectable feature.
• If feature belongs to identity inheritance, then it will also affect how it is handled during feature definition import. The importer will check that feature definitions with invalid feature data properties cannot be created, e.g. it will make sure that all data properties from base and child features are in sync.
• There are some data properties which are not important from identity inheritance point of view. Refer to the table below to see which data properties must be in sync.

Example of Feature Identity Inheritance

To understand better how feature identity inheritance can be created in Perfion refer to Figure 5 and the table below. The table shows several examples with different situations with identity inheritance and without.