Binary File rules - Completing the Create, Save As, or Specialization form

Create a binary file rule to include a graphics file, such as an image (including GIF, JPG, or PNG files) or other non-text files in your application as a rule. This rule type provides the security, inheritance versioning, and deployment benefits of rule resolution to a file.

Records can be created in various ways. You can add a new record to your application or copy an existing one. You can specialize existing rules by creating a copy in a specific ruleset, against a different class or (in some cases) with a set of circumstance definitions. You can copy data instances but they do not support specialization because they are not versioned.

Create a binary file rule by selecting Binary File from the Technical category.

Key parts

A binary file rule has three key parts:

Field Description
App Name (Directory) Enter the name of the destination Web server directory for this file when the file is extracted from the database.

Normally, use the webwb directory, a subdirectory of the application server.

Identifier Enter the name of this file. Choose a name suitable for Solaris or Windows, but using only lowercase letters. (If you enter an uppercase letter, the resulting extracted file nonetheless has only lowercase in the name.)

Ordinarily, static files from each RuleSet and Version are stored in distinct subdirectories.

File Type (extension)

Enter the extension for this type of file, for example,, jpg for Joint Photography Expert Group format.

The BMP file type is proprietary to Microsoft. While you can save a Windows BMP file in a binary file rules, use of JPG, GIF, or PNG files for graphics to be presented by Internet Explorer or other Web browsers is a best practice. Use a paint software package to convert a Windows BMP file to JPG, PNG, or GIF format, and then store the converted file in a binary file rule.

Rule resolution

When searching for binary file rules, the system filters candidate rules based on a requestor's RuleSet list of RuleSets and versions.

Time-qualified and circumstance-qualified rule resolution features are not available for binary file rules. The class hierarchy is not relevant to rule resolution of binary file rules.

About Binary File rules