What Are Objects and Attributes?

With its objected-oriented model, an HPDPS object represents a physical or logical entity in the print environment. For example, a specific printer device is represented as a physical printer object. Specific printer capabilities, on the other hand, are represented as a logical printer object.

All HPDPS objects such as physical printers, logical printers, spoolers, supervisers, queues, documents, and jobs have collections of attributes, or defined characteristics, assigned to them. For example, one of the attributes of a physical printer is called printer-model,reflecting the make and model of the printer device represented by the physical printer object. An attribute has a specific value assigned to it; for example, the attribute printer-model might have the value LaserJet4Si.

Some of the attributes are given default values when you create the object. For others, the values you associate with attributes as you configure your HPDPS print environment affect how HPDPS processes the jobs submitted by your users. Additionally, users can specify values for attributes of jobs and documents when they submit jobs.