You are viewing the documentation for Blueriq 16. Documentation for other versions is available in our documentation directory.

What is it for?

An attribute is used to define the properties of your entities, thereby defining the data that can exist in your application. A multivalued attribute can contain more than one value of the same type. 

What is it?

An attribute is a property of an entity. Every attribute is of a specific data type. For example the entity Person can have attributes like: Name (type: string), Gender (type: Boolean) and Date of birth (type: Date).

An attribute can:

  • have its values be limited to values specified in a value list (see Value list)
  • have multiple values (be multi-valued)

  • have a default value

  • can have an associated set of unit tests

How does an attribute get a value

An attribute can get a value through logic, or it can be set by the user, a service, a function flow or a web service.

When the value is derived through logic, a business rule, decision table or data rule determines the value of the attribute. The value is usually dependent on values of other attributes. When an attribute gets a value in this way we say that the value is "system set". A system set value is only determined when the value is necessary, for example when it is shown on a page or used as input for a service.

The value can also be set explicitly by the user. We call this value "user set". This is the case when the value is filled in on a page. Other ways to make give an attribute a user set value is through the use of a service. This also covers other situations like the use of a web service or a function flow. When an attribute has a user set value, this value will be fixed until the value is cleared, or another value is explicitly set.

Attribute Types: boolean, string, number, date, datetime, percentage, currency, integer

The Data type field is used to set the data type of an attribute.
Data typeDescription
BooleanContains a boolean TRUE or FALSE value, or UNKNOWN
StringContains a text string of max. 500 characters
NumberContains a numerical value
DateContains a date. The format depends on the locale of the application server
DatetimeContains a date and time. The format depends on the locale of the application server
Percentage

Contains a numerical value, representing a percentage. Note that that a value of a percentage is treated just like any number.

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the percentage is mainly used for presentation, in mathematical operations the percentage acts the same as a Number. If you want a percentage attribute to act as a percentage in a multiplication (i.e., 25 % * 80 = 20) , you have to divide the result by 100.

CurrencyContains a numerical value, representing a currency
IntegerContains an integer value

For the numerical types (Number/Percentage/Currency/Integer), there are rules which mathematical operations can be applied between attributes of the same or different type. See Expression function reference.


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