Profile Properties

  • Article

After the system administrator creates a profile definition, you can add profile properties to it by using the Business Desk Profile Definition Designer module.

Profile properties determine the information that is collected in a profile. For example, the User Object profile definition could contain the following properties: first name, last name, city, gender, age, and e-mail address. You can organize related profile properties into groups.

The following figure shows the parts of a sample User Object profile definition.

A figure showing a sample profile definition.

You can create profile properties of the following types:

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  • Commerce Server 2002 supports Unicode except surrogates.
Property type Property description
String Stores up to a maximum of 4,000 characters. String properties map to string data members.
Long String Stores up to a maximum of 2 to the power of 17 (217) characters. Long string properties map to string data members.
Number Stores integers. The maximum length of a number property is determined by the data store. Number properties map to number data members.
Decimal Stores floating point numbers. The maximum length of a decimal property is determined by the data store. Decimal properties map to number data members.
Boolean Stores one of two values (true/false, yes/no, or 1/0). Boolean properties map to Boolean data members.
Binary Stores binary data with a maximum size of 4 KB. Binary properties map to binary data members.
Long Binary Stores content, such as spreadsheets, documents, graphics, and sound up to a maximum size of 128 KB. Long binary properties map to binary data members.
Date/Time A composite date and time value. The format used and the maximum length are determined by the data store. Date/time properties map to date/time data members.
Date Contains date values that are in the range of 1/1/1950 to 12/31/2049. The format used and the maximum length are determined by the data store. Date properties map to date/time data members.
Time Contains values for hour, minute, second, and millisecond. The format used and the maximum length are determined by the data store. Time properties map to date/time data members.
Currency Accepts numbers in currency format. The currency format used and the maximum length are determined by data store. Currency properties map to currency data members.
Password Accepts text, and is treated like a string by the Profiles resource. Commerce Server Business Desk displays the value stored in a password property as asterisks (*). To avoid data loss, always replace the entire password. Password properties map to string data members and have a maximum length of 255 Unicode characters.
Site Term Site term properties are associated with a site term. Site term properties can be single-valued or multi-valued.
  • Single-valued site term properties allow users to select only one value.
  • Multi-valued site term properties allow users to select multiple values.

For example, your application could allow users to select multiple site term values on your Web site by pressing the CTRL key and clicking their choices from the site term drop-down list.

The values stored in this property must be valid values from the list of term names associated with that site term. Site term properties map to string data members and have a maximum length of 255 Unicode characters. Multiple values of a site term property are stored as a semicolon-separated string.
Profile Associated with a profile definition. A property containing an embedded profile definition can be single-valued or multi-valued. The value(s) stored in this property should be the primary key of a specific instance(s) of the associated profile(s).

A single-valued property containing an embedded profile definition allows a single profile to be created with the embedded profile definition. A multi-valued property containing an embedded profile definition allows an unlimited number of profiles (limited only by system capacity) to be created with the embedded profile definition.

Profile properties map to string data members and have a maximum length of 255 Unicode characters. You can embed an unlimited number of profile definitions in a single profile definition. You use the Profile Editor module to edit up to four levels of embedded profiles, including the container profile, from the container profile.

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