Project scope

The data-dictionary.xml has a project scoped section located at the top of the file. Dictionary values in this section are available for all targets, and will be used unless overridden by the same key at the target scope. These can be edited on the Project Orchestration tab, under the "Data Dictionary" sub-tab.

For example:

        @@SCRIPT_PATH@@=/path/to/my/script
        @@SHAPE@@=Square

Target scope

Each target has an placeholder in the data-dictionary.xml. Project scoped keys can be overridden at the target scope, thus enabling different values for dictionary keys to be set for each target, or a subset of targets.

        @@DICTIONARY_KEY@@=DictionaryValue 

For example:

        @@SCRIPT_PATH@@=/path/to/my/script
        @@SHAPE@@=Triangle

In this example the path to the script is given by @@SCRIPT_PATH@@ and this may be different in each target. The @@SCRIPT_PATH@@ variable may be used in the orchestration definition or any other file in the project, and at deployment time this dictionary value will be replaced with the target specific value.

Typically if you create files from a template shipped within a particular plugin, all the generated files created from the template, will use @@VARIABLE_NAME@@ placeholders, and all the values will be defined in the data dictionary file.

To edit these values through the User Interface, on the Project Target edit panel, choose Dictionary -> Data Dictionary

Overriding dictionary values

Whenever you save a project, all dictionary keys (@@key@@) in the project are discovered by default, and set to blank at project scope. We might choose to set the default @@SHAPE@@ to 'Square' in the project scope but override this where necessary in the target scope. Using the above examples, the shape in the project scope ('Square') is overridden by the one in the target scopes and would be set to 'Triangle'