Working with records
Databases use records to organize and store information. In HCL Compass, the term record (Entity) refers to a structure that organizes the information available for a single instance of a record type (EntityDef), such as defect. HCL Compass records can contain data from multiple database tables.
HCL Compass uses instances of the Entity class to organize and manage record data. Each instance of the Entity class provides access to the values in any defined field types of the record, including a list of the duplicates of the record, the history of the record, and any files attached to the record (if these types of fields are defined for the record type).
HCL Compass database identifiers
A HCL Compass database identifier (DBID) is an integer value used to uniquely identify an object within a HCL Compass database. The limit for unique DBIDs is about 2.1 billion. This limit imposes an upper bound on the number of records that can exist in a HCL Compass database and thus allows more records to be created. The new limit of about 2.1 billion is for stateless records, workspace items, and other database structures necessary to manage them. Since the range of DBIDs used for stateful records has increased, the range of the string form of the IDs (the display name) also is increased. The new limit for stateful records is 100 million (due to the limitation on the string ID format for a record). The display name (string ID) of a stateful record type is the short database name (such as RATLC) followed by the numeric representation of the record DBID (with leading zeros to eight digits). For example, under the old limit, the largest ID for a record in the RATLC database is RATLC16777215. Under the new limit, the largest ID is RATLC99999999.