To allow users to define the document types that authoring tools publish and retrieve, the integrated SmartPlant Enterprise authoring tools store some of their authoring tool metadata in the SmartPlant schema instead of in the tool adapter. Metadata that can be defined in the SmartPlant schema includes:
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Publishable document types - Types of documents each authoring tool can publish.
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Retrievable document types - The types of documents each authoring tool can retrieve.
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Publishable document classes - The class definitions that describe published data for each publishable document type. Each publishable class definition must realize a primary interface definition that has a Componentization relationship with one of the publishing tool's component schemas.
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Retrievable document classes
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Tombstone document types - The type of document published by the tool to describe deleted objects in a previously published document
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Publishable component schema - A subset of the SmartPlant schema that describes the class definitions and realized interface definitions published by an authoring tool. Each authoring tool may have one or multiple component schemas. Each class definition typically belongs to one and only one component schema.
Defining this metadata externally provides users with the flexibility to add new document types for publish and retrieve without requiring the authoring tool adapter software to undergo any changes. You can modify the publish and retrieve document types and other metadata for an authoring tool in the Schema Editor. To be able to edit the SmartPlant schema in the Schema Editor, you must temporarily change the SmartPlant schema, which is marked read-only by default, to editable.
After you make the required changes to the tool metadata in the SmartPlant schema, you can use the Generate Tool Metadatas command to generate metadata XML files for each authoring tool that has metadata defined in the SmartPlant schema.
The SmartPlant software supports both internal (defined by the tool adapter API) and external definition of this type of tool metadata. The SmartPlant software looks for the external tool metadata schema file on the integration server in the folder where EFSchema.xml is located first. The format for tool metadata schema file is <ToolID>_meta.xml, where ToolID is the authoring tool's ID that matches the tool ID passed in the Connect and Register calls of IEFCommonUI interfaces by the authoring tools. This file format is created by default when you use the Generate Tool Metadatas command in the Schema Editor.
If no tool metadata file is available, the SmartPlant software calls the authoring tool adapter API to get the internal tool metadata.