topic Custom Metadata problem in Alfresco Archive

Custom Metadata problem

jmdavid — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:52:00 GMT

Hi,I created 2 custom metadata for Categories named "My Date" and "My Value".Now, when I try to edit a category, I get the following error: "Failed to update metadata".When I want to create add a category, I get: "org.alfresco.service.namespace.NamespaceException: Namespace prefix rmc_My is not mapp

Re: Custom Metadata problem

jmdavid — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:57:04 GMT

I also tried to edit the file "recordCustomModel.xml" directly in Alfresco Explorer; I made the file inline editable, removed my custom stuff and checked in with following error:
Unable to check in Content Node due to system error:09190018 Failed to validate model update - found non-incrementally updated ASPECT '{http://www.alfresco.org/model/rmcustom/1.0}customRecordCategoryProperties'

Re: Custom Metadata problem

norgan — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:49:35 GMT

try renaming your fields so my-date or somtheing like that.

Re: Custom Metadata problem

jmdavid — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:02:10 GMT

Thanks for answer but it doesn't work. The label (title) is changed but not the name itself:

<aspect name="rmc:customRecordCategoryProperties">
            <title>Properties for DOD5015 Custom Record Category</title>
            <properties>
                <property name="rmc:My_Date">
                    <title>testdate</title>
                    <type>d:date</type>
                    <mandatory>false</mandatory>
                    <index enabled="true">
                        <atomic>true</atomic>
                        <tokenised>FALSE</tokenised>
                    </index>
                </property>
                <property name="rmc:My_Value">
                    <title>testvalue</title>
                    <type>d:text</type>
                    <mandatory>false</mandatory>
                    <index enabled="true">
                        <atomic>true</atomic>
                        <tokenised>FALSE</tokenised>
                    </index>
                    <constraints>
                        <constraint ref="rmc:5be5476a-71dc-4f23-8f59-c97a8b79f854"/>
                    </constraints>
                </property>
            </properties>
            <associations/>
            <overrides/>
            <mandatory-aspects/>
        </aspect>

Again, when I try to edit this file by hand and check-in, I get:
Unable to check in Content Node due to system error:09210003 Failed to validate model update - found non-incrementally updated ASPECT '{http://www.alfresco.org/model/rmcustom/1.0}customRecordCategoryProperties'

I read those threads:
http://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16599
https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ALFCOM-3264

Seems that there is no solution. Should I reinstall? Very bad, not reliable for production yet.

Re: Custom Metadata problem

norgan — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:43:56 GMT

you must not use the "_" character, that is used for masking the ":" character in the workflow variablespace. MAybe thats it

Re: Custom Metadata problem

apurcel — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:02:45 GMT

Alas - I made the same mistake - entered a space in the meta data name - but even if I remove the space, the error message appears, and an underscore remains.

If editing the xml doesn't work - is reinstalling the only way to fix it?

Re: Custom Metadata problem

jmdavid — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:00:39 GMT

Yes, I had to reinstall because once you created the custom metadata, there is no way to delete it, even when editing the XML file by hand (!!!).

Re: Custom Metadata problem

norgan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:16:23 GMT

That is not quite correct. You cannot remove the model until all content of that type is deleted and cleared from the database. You could also write a script to spider through all content and change the contenttype.

Norgan

Re: Custom Metadata problem

ebremer — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:36:54 GMT

I had done the same thing, use a space in the custom metadata field naming within the records management interface and it started giving me errors. Flushed the whole installation to clear it (I had not uploaded content yet, so it wasn't a big deal). What I would like to know, is the space character is custom metadata fields actually an illegal? And, if so, why does the GUI in RM even allow an illegal character in the first place? - Erich

Re: Custom Metadata problem

dalequalls — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:23:49 GMT

Any possibility of modifying the database directly? Any idea on which table these are stored in?

I too put spaces in the custom metadata field name and now can't add any folders…

As far as for how deletions should work, I think a forced report generation should be done showing the affected records along with the audit info on who removed the custom field. This data should all be stored in the audit tables or some type of a backup table so it can be restored in the event of a malicious or accidental deletion by an admin.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Thx!

Re: Custom Metadata problem

neilm — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:56:34 GMT

Whitespace & underscores are not legal characters for custom property or custom association names and should not be allowed in the UI.

A bug has already been entered in our JIRA which may be related to the issues you're experiencing. https://issues.alfresco.com/jira/browse/ETHREEOH-3564 Watch that bug for a future fix and feel free to add any information which you feel would add value. I will edit the bug now to ensure that all such illegal characters are prevented in a future release.

Unfortunately, if you do create an unusable custom property, you will be unable to delete it due to the restriction described below. This may not be an urgent problem for non-mandatory properties, as you could just ignore the property after that point. Clearly the situation is more serious for any such property which has been flagged as mandatory.

Some background on the inability to delete custom properties that have been created: if you look at http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Dynamic_Models under "Updating and re-loading custom model", you'll see that only incremental updates are supported for an active model in Alfresco. One consequence of this is that deletions from the model(s) are not supported. This restriction is applied at the level of the Alfresco Repository and that is why the deletion won't work even when you edit the model xml. It is when the updated model xml is committed, that the Repo examines it, discovers the deletion and throws the NamespaceException.
Obviously there is currently no UI support for custom property (or association) deletion.

Re: Custom Metadata problem

neilm — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:21:01 GMT

There is a workaround to this issue which I hope might be useful to some of you.

The issue here is that you cannot commit "non-incremental" changes to any active model in Alfresco. Non-incremental means deletions and some updates. But you can make non-incremental changes to inactive models.
What you need to do is to make the recordsCustomModel.xml inactive, delete the custom property that is causing trouble and then make the custom model active again.

So here's how you do it. To do any of this, I'm assuming that you're currently the only user of the system and that there are no records using any of these properties. So this will perhaps only apply to people who are trying out Alfresco DOD5015 in a limited test environment.
You'll need to use the Alfresco web (JSF) client rather than the Share client. Log in as admin, navigate to Company Home/Data Dictionary/Records Management and you should see a file called recordsCustomModel.xml. Edit the properties of this node and uncheck the active box. Then edit it inline. You'll need to scroll the xml content to near the bottom to find the custom properties. Identify your problem property and delete its xml. Apply your changes to this file. Then change the active property back to 'checked' and if you refresh your RM web UI your model should be ok again.
Now recreate the property but do not use spaces or underscores in its name.