Category schemas

Category schemas organize assets within the repository in a hierarchical taxonomy so that users can find and reuse them. A category schema is a group of categories.

Repository administrators create category schemas based on the needs of their company, its structure, and the types of assets that their company creates.

Repository administrators and community administrators can configure categories for the entire repository and for specific communities in the Rational® Asset Manager web client.

Users can submit assets using any combination of category schemas that apply to the asset.

Uses for categories

You can find assets and govern the repository using categories in the following ways:
  • You can organize and group assets that have different asset types with categories. You can group and reuse common descriptive information for many asset types.
  • Categories help users find assets; you can use categories to filter search results or to view all assets with a certain categorization.
  • Categories can trigger custom reviews that have been assigned to specific categories in a community.
  • Community roles can be assigned to assets with specific categories.

Considerations for categories

Consider the following when creating category schemas:
  • Categories can be broad or specific. Broad categories can break down into increasingly specific subcategories.
  • You can designate subcategories as exclusive, which means that a user will be able to select only one subcategory at that level. For example, if a user is categorizing an asset using the "Automobile" schema, there may be a category for body style where the child nodes are 'Coupe' and 'Wagon.' In the schema, the child nodes of 'Body Style' should be marked exclusive so that the user can only choose one body style.

Scoping category schemas

If some communities require a category schema that will not be applicable or useful to other communities, Repository administrators can scope, or limit, a category schema for use in specific communities. Community administrators can further modify category schemas to better match the needs of assets in their community.

Administrators can also configure asset types to use only specific category schemas.

Example

A company creates a category schema called Software for reuse across many software asset types. The schema has fields for Platform, Languages, and Has official documentation?. The Has official documentation? field has exclusive children.

Each field has subcategories as follows:
Platform
  • Windows
  • Macintosh
  • Linux
Languages
  • English
  • Chinese
    • Simplified
    • Traditional
  • French
  • German
  • Korean
  • Japanese
  • Spanish
Has official doccumentation?
  • Yes
  • No

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