Management of Stored Associations

Each geometrical constraint is stored as an Association element. Association elements are stored in a DESI database under a world element of type Association World (ASSOWL). Each Association world can contain any number of Association Group elements (ASSOGP), which in turn contain Association elements (ASSOC).

Associations created by this utility are placed in Association Groups with the PURPOSE attribute set to ASEQ. Every time that an Association is created by this utility, the system searches for the first Association Group element that it can find with PURPOSE set to ASEQ. If the first group found cannot be written to by the user, the system searches for the next Association Group, until an ASSOGP is found where the user can create an Association. The storage Associations can be managed in several ways:

• All Associations generated by this utility are put into one group - only recommended if there is a small number of Associations of this type.

• Association Groups are locked to prevent any more Associations from being created in that location and new Association Groups are created to collect the next batch of Associations.

• Use Data Access Control to open certain Association Group elements for write access to certain users or groups of users.