Attributes (OOM)

An attribute is a named property of a class (or an interface) describing its characteristics.

An attribute can be created for a class or interface in the following diagrams:

A class or an interface may have none or several attributes. Each object in a class has the same attributes, but the values of the attributes may be different.

Attribute names within a class must be unique. You can give identical names to two or more attributes only if they exist in different classes.

In the following example, the class Printer contains two attributes: printspeed and laser:

Interface Attributes

An attribute of an interface is slightly different from an attribute of a class because an interface can only have constant attributes (static and frozen). For example, consider an interface named Color with three attributes RED, GREEN, and BLUE. They are all static, final and frozen.

If you generate in Java, you see:

public interface Color
{
 public static final int RED = 0xFF0000;
 public static final int GREEN = 0x00FF00;
 public static final int BLUE = 0x0000FF;
}

All these attributes are constants because they are static (independent from the instances), final (they can not be overloaded), and frozen (their value cannot be changed).

You can use the attributes of other interfaces or classes and add them to the current interface.

• Creating an Attribute
  You can create an attribute from the property sheet of a class, identifier, or interface.
• Attribute Properties
  To view or edit an attribute's properties, double-click its Browser or list entry. The property sheet tabs and fields listed here are those available by default, before any customization of the interface by you or an administrator.
• Setting Data Profiling Constraints
  PowerDesigner supports data profiling in the physical data model (PDM) and the Standard Checks and Additional Checks tabs are provided in OOM attribute and domain property sheets solely to retain this information when linking and synching between an OOM and a PDM.