In this chapter we look at how you can customise the attributes and keywords system to add new searchable attributes into the WACS system. The system comes preloaded with a number of general attributes, but it is relatively easy to add new ones to the WACS system. In due course we may add a web app to make this task even easier, but for now it has to be done at a command line level.

The preloaded attributes are to be found in the XML file called attrib.xml in the populate directory of the WACS distribution. These attributes are imported into the WACS system when it is initially set up using the wacspop command and we can actually use this same mechanism to import our own customisations. Alternatively we could manually create new records direct in the WACS database using SQL. However we recommend the approach of creating an XML file to feed into the wacspop as this improves the data validation and provides a portable way to make this change to a number of installations. You could also send us the XML file and associated artwork for possible inclusion in future WACS releases.