Field Help for Numbering Table

Features

The following provides help for the fields on the Numbering Table page.

Function	Description
Name	Type a name for the numbering table.
Class Name	Select a class for the numbering table from the dropdown list.
Use as Class Default	When generating a number for a new object, the system locates the numbering table defined for the document type. If no numbering table is defined, the default numbering table for the class is used. Leave this box checked to use this numbering table as the default for the selected class. Remove the checkmark to create a nondefault numbering table.
Table ID	This field appears if you remove the checkmark from the Use as Class Default checkbox. Type a unique ID for this nondefault numbering table.
Prefix	Object numbers contain a prefix, the generated sequential number, and a suffix. Type a prefix into this field or enter a token from the table below.
Postfix (or Suffix)	Object numbers contain a prefix, the generated sequential number, and a suffix. Type a suffix into this field or enter a token from the table below.
Sequence Number Width	Type a maximum width for the generated sequential number in the object ID. The default value is 10. Note Changing this value will restart the sequence. For example, changing the width from 5 to 6 will reset the sequence to 1. You must ensure that the width will be sufficient for the interval over which the sequence is used. For example, if you set the width to 5, you should be sure that the number of objects generated will be fewer than 100,000. End of the note.
Sequence Number Padded	Check this box to fix the width of the generated sequential number, so that it always matches the value in the Sequence Number Width field. For example, you might create a numbering table with a company name prefix and a year suffix; if the Sequence Number Width is 5 and padding is enabled, there will always be five digits in the sequential number, as follows: PROP-BIOGENX-00001-2004 PROP-BIOGENX-00002-2004 PROP-BIOGENX-00003-2004 PROP-BIOGENX-00004-2004 PROP-BIOGENX-00005-200 ... ROP-BIOGENX-08261-2004 ...
Start Number	Object numbers are generated from an assigned starting point. Type the start number into this field. The default value is 1.
Number Incremented By	Object numbers are generated using a configured increment. Type the increment into this field. The default value is 1.
Number Definition Token Substitution	In addition to string literals, the prefix and suffix of the numbering table definition can contain tokens, as indicated in the table below:

Token	Definition	Example
<%MON%>	lowercase current month	March = mar
<%MONTH%>	uppercase current month	March = MAR
<%M%>	unjustified current numeric month	March = 3
<%MM%>	justified current numeric month	March = 03
<%D%>	unjustified current day	8
<%DD%>	justified current day	08
<%YYYY%>	four-digit current year	2002 = 2002
<%YY%>	two-digit current year	2002 = 02
<%ABBREV_NAME%>	current company abbreviated name	ACME
<%DEPLOYMENT%>	Current value of doc.numbering_table.token.deployment	STG

The Abbreviated Name is a property on the company object and allows documents to be identified based on their owning company, and for each company's documents to be separately numbered starting from the assigned starting number. The use of date components allows for numbers to reset when that portion of the date changes. The current day values are provided for symmetry, but it is expected that the use of these tokens is limited in most cases to the year value, and in some cases to the year followed by the month. If the year is used, document numbering restarts from the assigned starting point when the year changes.

The Deployment token must be used to ensure that two different implementations use different numbering sequences. Generating different numbering sequences becomes important when using the Object Migration Facility to migrate classes that use numbering tables between systems, if new objects are added to both implementations.

Example Example

For example, consider the migration of suppliers from a staging to a production system. If both use the same numbering system, the first supplier added to each system will have the same numbering-table-generated number, such as Supplier-1. If suppliers are then migrated across these systems, the database-unique constraint typically applied to the column containing the generated number fails. Using the Deployment token on both systems ensures different numbering sequences for the systems and a successful migration.

End of the example.

In addition to configuring the Numbering Table object to use a Deployment token, the system administrator must set the document system property doc.numbering_table.token.deployment with different values on the source and target implementations and ensure that the property's Lock during Migration property is set to prevent overwriting the token value during migration of System Property objects. See System Properties for details.