Adding a New Property to a Profile Definition

  • Article

Each profile property has attributes that define the characteristics of the information the property collects. For example, you can use the attributes of the profile property First Name to define the property as a single-valued string that will be exported to the Data Warehouse.

To add a new property

  1. In Profiles, click Profile Definition Designer.

  2. In the Profiles screen, select the profile definition to which you want to add a property, and then click Ee811648.open(en-US,CS.20).gif on the toolbar.

  3. In the Profile: <profile definition> screen, in the Properties list, select the property group to which you want to add the new property, and then click Add.

    Ee811648.note(en-US,CS.20).gifNote

    • If you do not select a property group, the new property will not be organized by property group, and will appear at the property group level.

  4. In the Add dialog box, select the Add a new property option, and then click OK.

  5. In the Attributes section, do the following:

    Use this To do this
    Name Type a programmatic name for the property. The name can contain a maximum of 128 alphanumeric characters and the underscore (_) symbol. The name cannot contain spaces.
    Display name Type a display name for the property. The display name can contain a maximum of 128 characters.
    Description Type a description for the property.
    Type Select the property type from the drop-down list. Properties can be of the following types:
    • String
    • Long String
    • Number
    • Decimal
    • Boolean
    • Binary
    • Long Binary
    • Date/Time
    • Date
    • Time
    • Currency
    • Password
    • Site Term
    • Profile

    Ee811648.note(en-US,CS.20).gif Note

  6. In the Advanced Attributes section, do the following:

    Use this To do this
    Active Specify whether the new property is Active or Inactive.
    Map to data Click the ellipsis […] button to open the Data Source Picker dialog box.

    In the Data Source Picker dialog box, select the data member for the property. The data members available for the property are the data members that are not already used in the profile definition you are editing. Properties that are being used by the profile definition are unavailable.

    If you do not map the property to a data member, the property will not be stored in a database, but will be available in memory, for example to store state information while a user is visiting your Web site.
    Key type Select a key type from the drop-down list:
    • Unique Key. Indicates that the value of this property is unique for all members. You map an attribute that is specified as a unique key to a unique field in a SQL Server database or to a unique attribute in a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) source.
    • Primary Key. Indicates that the value of this property is unique for all members. You map an attribute that is specified as a primary key to a primary field in a SQL Server database or to a unique attribute in a LDAP source. The primary key is used to relate profiles created with embedded profile definitions.
    • Join Key. Relates this property to another property in another data store in the Profile Service. To edit a property that is defined as a Join key that has been used to collect data, you must delete the database columns containing the join key data. After you migrate the old data into the new database columns, delete the database columns. Commerce Server 2002 does not support modifying the join key property when you have persisted data.
    • Dual (Primary and Join) Key. Indicates that the value of this property is unique, and relates this property to a property in another data store.
    Encrypted Commerce Server 2002 supports two types of encryption: Asymmetric Encryption (AE), and One Way Hash. Commerce Server 2002 does not support symmetric encryption. See Adding Encrypted Properties to a Profile Definition.
    Required Specify that this property is required to contain a value.
    Exported Specify that this property is to be exported to the Data Warehouse.
    Defer cache load Specify that the property will not be returned until explicitly requested. Each deferred cache property will be retrieved individually from the OLEDB Provider for Commerce Server when it is accessed.
    Multi-valued Specify that the property accepts more than one value.
    Searchable Specify that the property will be available to the search function of the Web site.
    RDN Mark this property as the Relative Distinguished Name (RDN) for all profiles to be mapped to Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) sources. This does not apply to OLE DB Provider for Microsoft Commerce Server (OLE DB) sources, or to any other data source type.
    Hashing key Specify that this property value will be hashed and used to determine the data source partition in which the profile data will be stored.

  7. To apply the new property and display it in the Properties list, click Apply.

  8. To save the property, click Save on the toolbar to save the profile.

The profile definition is saved with the new property. After you add a property to a profile definition, you must publish the changes on your Web site. For information about publishing your changes, see Publishing Profile Definition Changes on Your Web Site.

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All rights reserved.