[midPoint] Blog: Archetypes in Gutenberg

[Radovan Semancik]

Dear midPoint community,

MidPoint 4.0 “Gutenberg” <https://evolveum.com/midpoint-4-0-gutenberg/> 
is really a revolutionary midPoint release. It is a long-term support 
(LTS) <https://wiki.evolveum.com/display/midPoint/Long-Term+Support> 
release. But it also brings groundbreaking features. The support for 
/archetypes/ is certainly one of those features that can be a real 
game-changer in the future. First part 
<https://evolveum.com/road-to-archetypes/> of this post told the story 
how the idea of archetypes evolved during the course of midPoint 
development. This part will describe how archetypes work and how they 
can be used.

The idea of archetypes is both simple and complex. The simple part is 
really simple: archetypes can be used to distinguish object types. There 
would be an archetype for business role, another archetype for 
application role, yet another archetype for employee, customer, partner, 
department, project, work-group and so on. Administrator will no longer 
create “user” or “role. The administrator will create “employee” or 
“business role” instead. There could be nice icons and colors for 
archetyped objects in midPoint user interface. Archetypes can be used in 
object lists (views) in midPoint menu. Overall, archetypes make midPoint 
user interface nicer. That is the simple part.

The complex part has everything to do with the idea of metaroles 
<https://wiki.evolveum.com/display/midPoint/Metaroles>. Metarole is 
quite a strange kind of an animal. Ordinary roles are usually applied to 
users. But metaroles can be applied to anything: users, orgs, services – 
and even roles themselves. Hence the term “metarole”, meaning “role 
applied to another role”. Metaroles can change the behavior of the 
object they apply to. Metaroles can be used to implement very elegant 
provisioning patterns 
<https://wiki.evolveum.com/display/midPoint/Roles%2C+Metaroles+and+Generic+Synchronization>. 
Metaroles can apply policies. Overall, metaroles can be incredibly 
powerful. 
<https://wiki.evolveum.com/display/midPoint/Using+Metaroles+for+Policy+Configuration>

Simply speaking, archetypes 
<https://wiki.evolveum.com/display/midPoint/Archetypes> are just 
metaroles wearing a nice suit. Archetype can do anything that a metarole 
could do. Which makes them quite powerful already. In addition to that, 
archetype can change the look and feel of the “archetyped” objects. But 
there is still more. Archetypes are designed to specify, how an 
archetyped objects should fit into your customized midPoint 
configuration. An archetype can specify /assignment relation 
constraints/. For example, “project” archetype could specify, that it 
can have members and managers and those must be users. No other relation 
could be made to a “project”. Therefore midPoint user interface will not 
offer to assign project owner or approver. Only member (“default” 
relation) and manager (“manager” relation) assignments are allowed. And 
those assignments must be placed in user objects. Roles, orgs and 
services cannot be members of a project. This may seem like a small 
thing. But this approach has a great potential to significantly simplify 
and streamline midPoint user interface – which is getting quite complex 
already. The big idea is that archetypes could make midPoint user 
interface more accessible to non-technological users.

Archetypes are a huge leap forward. But there is still a long way to go. 
Archetypes in midPoint 4.0 are powerful, but they can still be improved 
<https://wiki.evolveum.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=27361684>. It 
would be nice if archetypes could define a custom schema for archetyped 
objects. Or if they could specify custom lifecycle model. And the user 
interface part can always be improved to make it more user-friendly. The 
funding to develop archetypes in midPoint 4.0 was provided by a platform 
subscription <https://evolveum.com/services/>. Another such subscription 
can be used to improve archetypes further. That is how midPoint evolves.

(Reposted from Evolveum blog 
<https://evolveum.com/archetypes-in-gutenberg/>)

-- 
Radovan Semancik
Software Architect
evolveum.com

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