Formats

A format definition is used to capture information about different application file formats. A format stores the name of the application, the product version, and the suffix (extension) used to identify files. It can also contain the commands necessary to automatically launch the application and load the relevant files from Collaboration and Approvals. Formats are the definitions used to link Collaboration and Approvals to the other applications in the user environment.

For more information, see MQL Command Reference: format Command.

You must be a Business Administrator to add or modify formats.

Applications typically change their internal file format only occasionally. Eventually, older file formats are no longer readable by the current version of the software. You should create new format definitions (with appropriate names) as the applications change so that you can later find the files that are in the old format and bring them up to date.

The system does not do any checking of the type of file that is checked into a format. For example, a word document with a .doc extension can be checked into a format defined for HTML files. This means that formats can be used to define directories for the checked in files of a business object.

A business object can have many file formats and they are linked to the appropriate type definition by the policy definition. for more information, see Policies.