Dataflow Attributes

Attributes are custom metadata that can be used to categorize flows when modeling them. They are used as classifiers that the user can add to better categorize flows.

Attributes can be of any type and are totally configurable depending on Customers’ needs. Some examples of attributes are:

• Confidentiality attribute, with values Secret, Public and Reserved.
• Approved by attribute, with values CEO, CFO, HR, Team Leader.
• Tags attribute, with totally open values dynamically updated by users depending on the flow.
  And so on.

Attributes are structured as dictionaries, i.e. lists of several values that a specific attribute can have.
The administrator decides the name of each attribute, its type and its value. There are two types of attributes:

• Closed dictionaries: these attributes can only have the values entered by the administrator at the time the attribute is defined or modified. Use closed dictionaries when the range of possible attribute values is known up-front and you want to have a strict control on the attribute content.
• Open dictionaries: these attributes can assume the values entered by the administrator at the time the attribute is defined or modified, but they can be extended with new values when the flow is modeled. Use open dictionaries when the range of possible values is not known up-front or its nature is dynamic.

Both open dictionaries and closed dictionaries can be single value or multivalued.
Single value attributes can assume just one value at a time, whereas multivalued attributes can be assigned more than one value.
If you need to leave attributes as open as possible to users, you should set them to open and multivalued. An example of application of open attributes is TAGS with values added dynamically by users.
If you want users to select values only from a pre-configured specific list of values, you have to set the attribute to close.
Depending on your needs, you can set the attribute to multivalued for multiple selection of values or single value to force users to select it from the predefined drop-down list.

Click here and learn how to configure Attributes in Data Watcher.