The service.properties file contains properties used by the Windchill service delegate mechanism. This mechanism is a general facility for adding delegate classes to an existing service to implement new, customized behavior. In this context, service can mean any sort of Java mechanism that provides functionality to other classes.

For example, assume a copy service exists that can make copies of certain classes of objects. The service knows how to make copies only for objects of certain classes: the classes for which copy service delegates have been created. Each delegate implements an interface, defined as part of the copy service, that contains the methods needed by the service. Once the delegate is created and put in the codebase, the copy service is notified of its existence by adding an entry to the service.properties file.

Generally, each service is accessed using a factory. The factory either returns instances of delegates to perform services on particular classes of objects, or it performs the operations on the objects itself by instantiating the necessary delegates internally.

If a Windchill service supports customization by adding delegates, the description of how to do the customization is described elsewhere in the documentation.