Object Class Definition Adaptation

There may be situations when you want to override some settings (for example, attribute values cardinality, protected objects, or attribute fetch strategy) not only for selected object type(s), but for all objects in a given object class. For example, you may need to specify fetch strategy for specific attribute of groupOfUniqueNames object class, and apply this consistently to all object types defined for this object class. To do so, schemaHandling/objectClass definition can be used.

This is something that had been achieved by setting default=true for a selected object type definition. (See Defaults.) However, the use of object class definition adaptation is more focused and (in a sense) more clear way how to achieve this.

Beware: Although the XSD type is formally ResourceObjectTypeDefinitionType (primarily because of implementation reasons), not all elements of ResourceObjectTypeDefinitionType are supported here. For example, it’s not possible to specify kind, intent, nor super-type here. Because of a limitation of XSD language we are not able to express these restrictions without changing the order of XML elements in complying documents (because the typical solution: deriving both ResourceObjectTypeDefinitionType and something like ResourceObjectClassDefinitionType from a common ancestor would mean that the order of XML elements in resulting documents would be different from what it is now).

We also advise to avoid specification of pure object-type concepts (like mappings) in these definitions. It is better to create a special (abstract) object type to do this.