Handling Part Orphan Status
In the current context, an orphan part is any part that is not used by any parts lists and that does not participate in any supersession chain. Orphan parts can enter the system through a third party bundle load or become an orphan at a later stage. Any operation that creates or deletes relations (such as parts list to part or part to part) might have an impact on the part’s orphan status value. These operations are done during the transformation time, and the values get updated in the transformed output. Sometimes a part’s orphan status might be affected through a change in a supersession chain without the part itself being included.
Following are the steps usually followed to process the orphan calculation whenever any add or update operation gets performed on a parts list, part, or part relations:
1. Identify the affected parts resulted from the operation.
2. Check whether the orphan status of these parts is updated or not.
3. If the status has been changed, then the do the following steps based on the availability of data in the bundle:
◦ If the part is found in bundle, update the orphan status value in the transformed content.
◦ If the part is not found in the bundle, then retrieve the part from the Publication Manager, update the orphan status of the part, and add the part into the transformed output for further update.
4. Once all these values are updated, update the Transform Registry as well.