Windchill System Administrator's Guide

The fully qualified preference key is combined with a context to form a unique
row in the database table. This makes it possible for users and other divisions to
have separate preferences.
Preference Macros
The wt.prefs.WTPreferences class defines the following types of preference
context macros:
• USER_CONTEXT - the context for individual users.
• DEFAULT_CONTEXT - the context for the system default (shipping) values.
• CONTAINER_CONTEXT - a context used in the container hierarchy.
• CONTAINER_POLICY_CONTEXT - a container context that is enforced as
a policy.
• DIVISION_CONTEXT - the context used for any scopes defined in addition
to the default, container, and user scopes.
• DIVISION_POLICY_CONTEXT - a division context that is enforced as a
policy.
Creating a Preference Hierarchy
A familiar example of a hierarchy is a modern corporation, which is composed of
divisions. The divisions are composed of departments, which are composed of
teams consisting of users.
This hierarchical structure could be managed by preference delegates for defining
user preferences, as in the following structure:
• The bottom level in the hierarchy (users) would be managed by the
wt.prefs.delegates.UserDelegate, which implements the Macro
USER_CONTEXT.
• The top level (above the corporation) would be the DEFAULT_CONTEXT,
managed by the wt.prefs.delegates.DefaultSystemDelegate.
These delegates can be replaced by customized delegates; however, the
customized delegate must implement the DEFAULT_CONTEXT and
USER_CONTEXT macros for the preferences framework to operate properly.
See the Windchill Javadoc for details on the implementation of these delegates.
For the rest of the hierarchy, delegates must be written to extend
PreferenceDelegate and implement the abstract methods. The number of delegates
that perform this task can be variable, each level may have its own delegate, or a
single delegate can be used to handle the body of the tree.
Use the following procedure to add a delegate to the preference hierarchy:
1. Add the delegate in the appropriate place in the delegates.properties file,
located in codebase/wt/prefs/delegates.
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