Dictionaries

Dictionaries are a defined list of values of a given Type that we can add as an attribute value.

The purpose of using dictionaries is to keep the data in order by limiting the possibility of: entering arbitrary data and, for example, typos.

Thanks to dictionaries, we can act as in the following animation: when editing/adding an object, filling in a given attribute, we can only select values from a closed list.

Example

In the layer “Hydrants” we have the attribute “Condition”. The company procedures specify that the state of a hydrant can have the following values:

1. Operational
2. To be replaced
3. Missing

The System Administrator creates a dictionary named e.g. “Hydrants: status list”, enters the values listed above and assigns the dictionary to an attribute. This ensures that all editors can only enter these three values. The others cannot be physically entered.

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1. How to manage Dictionaries?