Profiles
Profiles are defined in external registries, which contain additional helpful information. For the builtin profiles, this information is linked here:
Profiles are a set of mandatory and optional attributes and associated information for each attribute, like cardinality. You can get this block from the “Records & Profiles” category in the left sidebar.
The main task when using the FAIR DO Designer is to connect your provided information with attributes of a profile. A profile in turn needs to exist in a record block. This is shown in the figure below.
Cardinality
Some attributes allow adding multiple values. By default, there will be an empty List block attached to them. You can also get a list block using the “Lists” category.
Validation
Not everything can be checked before applying a design with real data. Still, we do some basic validation using the available information. To the right of each attribute, there is an icon indicating the validation status for this attribute. Use your mouse to hover over it and understand the meaning of the error, as well as possible details.
Mandatory and optional attributes
All attributes listed by default are mandatory. At the bottom of a block is a dropdown menu to add optional attributes, which then get appended below the menu.
Only optional attributes can be removed from the block.
Additional attributes and multiple profiles
A profile may allow adding additional attributes or profiles in the same record, below or above itself. Note that we do not support proper validation for such cases (yet).
While profiles are sets of attributes, an additional attribute is a single attribute you can add. This may be in addition to other profiles or other attributes. Otherwise, the concept is the same as for profiles.
Example: Assume two profiles, both requiring the same “dateCreated” attribute type. Setting the value on profile A will be enough, but profile block B will still complain that no value is attached. In this case, the warning can be safely ignored. If the values are not the same, this will lead to two different “dateCreated” values, which is disallowed by most profiles.
This is therefore currently being considered a feature for advanced users.