BOD ID for a Custom BOD

Has anybody ever had to work with a custom BOD for a third party application and, based on the XML definition, the BOD ID would need to be an attribute value, rather than an element value? ION isn't recognizing the value as the BOD ID and therefore I can't use it for a file connection point where I'd like to use the document ID as the file name. The main problem this presents is that I don't have any way to ensure a unique file name when the files are created in a shared folder. Using the Creation_Datetime as part of the file name is causing duplicate file names which either produce errors or are overwritten.

Find more posts tagged with

ION Connect

Comments

Legacy Contributor

Hello,

First some clarifications:

- I think you used the terms DocumentID and the BODID interchangeably. But note that BODID is a separate concept primarily used in a Process-Acknowledge pattern. Regardless I assume, what you meant is the primary key of the record - which is the documentID.

- Can you tell me the source application of this custom BOD? Is that also a file connection point or any other type of connection point?

- It is correct that an attribute is not allowed to be the DocumentID. It needs to be an element.

Some options:

- Is it possible for you to elevate your documentID field from an attribute to an element so that it can be used in your target file name (e.g: [document_id]_[current_datetime] )

- With the current setup, You could also try the 'Append' option if its OK to add more records to the same file.

- If the source application is an IOBox, you could potentially populate a GUID in one of the optional headers (Accounting entity, location or variationId) and subsequently use it as an additional qualifier to the file name.

Nick Stoltzfus

Thanks for your reply, Vignesh!

You're correct in that I had assumed the DocumentID that is used in the file connection point is synonymous with the BODID. The ultimate goal is for a value to end up in the DocumentID in the file connection point.

The application is Solidworks PDM. We're using a file connection point. We send a BOD from our ERP and transform it to a Solidworks xml which is then placed in a shared folder.

If I did want to change the DocumentID, would that be done by modifying NounIDsInstance.xml?

I appreciate your suggestions for alternative options. It would make sense to try to elevate the documentID to an element. Solidworks seems to be quite intolerant of anything outside the standard format and I'm not sure there is an element that would accept it, but perhaps there is a place I can put it. I will investigate.

Unfortunately the 'Append' option will not work as Solidworks requires a separate xml for each item.

As crude as it may sound, as a last resort I may simply insert a database connection point that will "slow down" the processing to ensure that the Creation_datetime will be unique.

Legacy Contributor

I agree with Vignesh. It sounds like you are having a key conflict on document ID. The way windows resolves this is overwrite, apend, or rename. As another use case a diff tool (kdiff) would be helpful to determine the difference between the 2 bod's that are causing the error. In addition to timestamp, you could apend an index to each document _0_[ts] ... _1_[ts] ... _2 _[ts] or if you want to be nifty, use svn to version the files and keep an entire historical record.

However, to guarantee uniqueness you would need to apend a certified GUID.

Heres an open source lib i wrote in c# for windows and demo:

github.com/.../visualstudio_GUID

Heres an open source lib i contributed to for js:

github.com/.../guid

These would guarantee uniqueness.

Legacy Contributor

If you generated your custom BOD schema using File Templates (or DB connector) you can regenerate the BOD once again which will update the DocumentID.

If you defined your custom BOD manually, then you can change the <IDXPath> in the <NounName>.xml file to reflect the new element's xpath.

Copyright © 2025 Infor. All rights reserved.