Documentum repository includes a robust data dictionary, which is a collection of information about the repository and objects contained within it. Documentum applications such as webtop, DA use this information to enforce business rules on object types and their attributes.
Data Dictionary stores the following information about an object type and its attributes.
· Providing Value Assistance to attributes
· Display configuration for client applications.
· Labels for object types and attributes
· Multi-language support for attribute
· Implementing constraints
· Valid components for an object type
· Default LifeCycle.
Value assistance is one of the most useful features of Data Dictionary as many times we use this feature. We can specify the display configuration such as the layout of attributes displayed in the client applications, labels for object types and attributes. If we are planning to use Localization, we need to configure the localization information in Data Dictionary.
When we specify the default lifecycle for an object type, users can choose the lifecycle as default without knowing the object ID of the Life Cycle.
We can use Composer to create the object types and provide data dictionary information. Documentum have several object types to support the datadictionary. Once we make changes to the data dictionary, we need to run the datadictionary job provided by OOTB documentum to reflect the changes immediately. Even though we do not run the job, it is scheduled to run automatically so all the changes will be refreshed once this job is run.