Before copying and pasting objects
Copying and pasting between Folders
What happens when you copy and paste an object
Use the copy/paste feature in Composer to accelerate the object definition process. You may have an existing object that is very close to the definition that you require. Rather than redefine all object properties from scratch, you can make a copy of the existing object and modify it as required.
Objects that you define and store in the metadata repository are available for reuse and modification by any user with authorized access to that object.However, to prevent users from making conflicting modifications to objects, the software imposes certain restrictions.
You can only modify objects:
To modify a blocked object, make a copy of the object. The copied object then exists in the repository as a separate, distinct object that you can modify as required. The original object and all the references to it remain intact.
For details, see Modifying objects.
Before copying and pasting objects, keep in mind the following restrictions:
The result of copy/paste operations depends on the source and target Folders. When you copy and paste an object to a WorkFolder that belongs to:
You can copy and paste objects to the same or to a different WorkFolder via the navigator pane, the Entity Browser.
To copy and paste an object:
on the
toolbar or select Copy from the
Edit menu.
on the
toolbar or select Paste from the
Edit menu. Copy and paste operations usually involve the straightforward duplication of a single object. However, in Axway Composer, this operation is complicated by the following two factors:
If you copy an object to a Folder that belongs to the same root Folder as the original object, Composer only copies the selected object. If, on the other hand, you copy and paste an object and paste it to a Folder that belongs to a different root Folder, Composer maintains object validity and coherence by also duplicating all dependent objects to the target Folder.
Pasting an object may cause certain object naming conflicts, for example if an object of the same type and with the same name already exists in the target Folder in the target Entity.
When you copy two objects that have a dependency link between them, for example a Business-Document and an associated Mapping-Rule, or a Host and a CommNetwork, several possible cases may occur when you paste the object, as described next.
The objects that you paste to the target Folder are identical to the original objects and retain all references to other objects. However, the Signature tab is updated to display the new creation/modification date. The pasted objects take the status ToBeChecked.
If you copy a child object, and paste it to a Folder other than the Folder of its parent object, the software copies both the parent object and the child object to the target Folder, even if the tree of objects in the source and target root Folders is not identical.
The child object that you copy has no conflict with an existing object in the target Folder, so it is copied to the target Folder with the same name as the original.
However, since a parent object with the same name and of the same type already exists in the target Folder, a naming conflict exists. To resolve this conflict, Composer pastes the parent object into the target Folder and adds the suffix _Copy to the object name. For example: MyObject becomes MyObject_Copy.
The dependency link between the parent and child object is recreated and the copied objects take the status ToBeChecked.
Note: To check a copied object, you must first rename it. For example, some object names are limited to three or five characters (for example an AccountingIntegrator Output-Event or Transformation-Rule). Before you can check this kind of object, you must rename the object in order to remain within the restricted number of characters.
Before the software pastes the child object, it checks that the existing object in the target Folder is identical, with the same references and properties. If the objects are identical, the source child object is not pasted to the target Folder. If the copy/paste operation also involves pasting the parent object, Composer pastes the parent object and recreates a link between the copied parent object and the existing child object.
If the existing child object in the target Folder is not identical to the original, Composer pastes the source child object to the Folder and adds the suffix _Copy to the object name. Despite the change to the child object name, the parent object name does not change since there is no naming conflict.
To paste the object to two Folders that belong to the same root Folder, you must perform two copy/paste operations. Since copied objects with the same name already exist in the root Folder, Composer adds the suffix _Copy to the objects copied to the second Folder.
Composer starts checking the objects from the lowest level in the tree structure upwards. If it identifies an object in the target root Folder with the same name and type, it checks that the two objects are identical. If the objects have identical properties and dependencies, Composer does not create a copy of the object in the target Folder. If the objects are not identical, Composer creates a copy of the object and adds the suffix _copy to the object name.
It continues to check all objects in the tree of objects until it reaches the highest level of parent object.
If you create multiple copies of the same object, Composer adds an incremental number to the suffix _copy.
In AccountingIntegrator, when you create a new version of a Rule, Composer automatically attaches this new version to all Input-Events and Outputs that reference this Rule. So when you paste the object, Composer must link the newly created Rule version object to all Input-Events and Processing-Context-Out objects that already reference the Rule. If any Input-Event or Processing-Context-Out is non-modifiable, Composer creates a copy of the object, and names it Source Object Name_copy. This means that no update to the Input-Event or to the Processing-Context-Out is required. To link this new Rule version to objects that already reference the Rule, you must first make all referenced objects modifiable, then modify the new Rule version name by deleting the suffix _copy, and finally save the modification.