The standard COordinate Data Model is unlikely to cover all attributes required for a given CO. There are two ways of extending the data model to add additional attributes.
Simple
COordinate support simple extended attributes that can be attached to CO Person records on a per-CO basis. These extended attributes can be managed entirely via the COnsole or the REST COnnector, however the following limitations currently apply:
- Extended attributes only permit one value per CO Person. For example, if you wanted to add an attribute for a favorite ice cream flavor, each person can have only one favorite ice cream flavor. (As a workaround, you could define two similar fields: favorite1 and favorite2.)
- The only data types currently supported are:
- INTEGER
- TIMESTAMP
- VARCHAR(32)
- Once defined, an attribute's type cannot be changed.
Complicated
More sophisticated requirements can be met by implementing native models, views, and controllers in the CakePHP framework. Specifics are beyond the scope of this document, however note that while COordinate knows about and can manipulate simple extended attributes, it will not know about complicated extended attributes except to the extent that you modify the appropriate code.
Currently, there are no standards for implementing complicated extended attributes. As such, future versions of COordinate may not be compatible with your implementation.