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Registers & Designators

Registers and Designators​

A register is an additional "column" to identify an element, other than Name and Code. The individual elements of a Register are called Designators. Example: OCP register "Interlocking ID"; OCP Name: Stavanger, OCP Code: STV, OCP Interlocking ID: 53929

Code and Name​

The default registers are Name and Code. While Name designators do not have requirements other than uniqueness, the Code designators need to follow certain IT standards. The following characters are accepted in the Code designators:

  • numbers 0 to 9
  • capital letters A-Z
  • lowercase letters a-z
  • special characters # - . _ + @

Other characters, such as local letters (for example à, ß, ø, ñ, č) are not permitted for the Code designators.

Code designators also need to be unique. Code and Name are mandatory registers for all objects, except for trains, which have a train code and a train number. Train number does not follow the uniqueness criteria. The train code follows all the Code criteria.

Other Registers​

More registers can be created by the user/admin for different objects.

Other registers can have different caracteristics and always allow special letters and characters.

  1. mandatory - Setting a register to Mandatory means the designator needs to be inserted to create new elements. At the moment it is not possible to change a register already present to mandatory.
  2. locally unique - Setting a register to Locally unique means the designator needs to be unique in a predefined context. The context depends on the object the register is applied to.
  3. globally unique - Setting a register to Globally unique means the designator needs to be unique in the full scenario or project or infrastructure (depending where the object is managed).
  4. multiple - Setting a register to Multiple means the designator can have more than one designator.

Use cases​

Registers serve a variety of functions. They are important to correctly identify elements and visualise different identifiers, for example long or short names of OCPs or abbreviations of train categories. Which register will be visualised depends on the user-specific settings in the Organisation window, Designators.

They also serve as key for import interfaces, such as RailML or client-specific interfaces.