FeatureType and PropertyName Conventions

Feature type names and property names must be expressed in GML or XML as elements or attributes, so they must be valid element and attribute names. This means that they must be a qualified name (QName) as defined in the XML specifications of W3C. The QName definition is:

NCName::=(Letter|'_')(NCNameChar)*
NCNameChar::=Letter|Digit|'.'|'-'|'_'|CombiningChar|Extender
QName::=(Prefix':')?LocalPart
Prefix::=NCName
LocalPart::=NCName

The previous version of the Spectrum™ Technology Platform WFS used a semi-colon (;) and two back slashes (//) to separate Enterprise, Domain, and Content names. Also, spaces were permissible in the Content name and Property name. These characters and spaces are not permissible QName characters. Therefore, the following substitutions are made for the Spectrum™ Technology Platform OGC WFS.

  • semi-colon (;) – replaced by "_ES_"
  • two back slashes (//) – replaced by "_DS_"
  • spaces – replaced by "_SP_"

These convention rules are defined in a property file called minameconvention.prop in the WebFeature\resources\admin directory where WFS is installed. This file defines the character convention rules by value pairs. The default values are:

;=_ES_
//=_DS_
\ =_SP_

You can edit this file to include additional rules. For example, to replace "," with "_C_", then add the following line to the property file:

",=_C_"

You can also add new rules to this property file. The property key is the replaced string and the property value is the replacement string, which has to follow the definition of QName. Be aware that the replacement string must not be a sub-string of the PropertyName and FeatureType name.