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<concept id="GUID-B71AC5E3-8AA8-55AD-916F-9E873926011B" xml:lang="en"><title>Feature

Manager Collection Overview</title><prolog><metadata><keywords/></metadata></prolog><conbody>

<p>The Feature Manager collection is a set of classes used to manipulate feature

flags. </p>

<section id="GUID-E1E8BB89-C634-51D3-BBA1-A98BCCA3BD44"><title>Purpose</title> <p>A

feature is any piece of functionality which can be included in a phone at

ROM build time or excluded from it. An excluded feature is often written to

ROM at build time but excluded from the build by disabling it. </p> </section>

<section id="GUID-E914F975-B33E-55D0-9F7A-8CA65C321296"><title>Architecture</title> <p>The

feature management system uses the standard client server architecture. The

relationship between the components is : </p> <fig id="GUID-CA8AE056-6988-5611-BFE0-9999C0F02FF7">

<title>              Architecture of the feature management system       

    </title>

</fig><p>  Feature Manager Client is not supplied with all versions of Symbian

Platform. Feature Discovery, which is always supplied, provides a subset of

the functionality of Feature Manager Client and offers superior performance

under certain circumstances. </p><p> The data which the Feature Manager manages

is stored as a collection of  XML files in the feature database. These files

define a set of feature flags  which can be accessed using the Feature Manager

API. The file <filepath>featureuid.xml</filepath> is the master record of

all features in the database. You do not manipulate the feature database directly.

  </p><p> The feature manager database is also accessed by the tool <filepath>feat2hdr.pl</filepath> which

is used at ROM build time to convert the data relating to each feature into

.iby and .h files used by the source code of the  components which the features

refer to.   </p> </section>

<section id="GUID-A9D9B55D-8B3F-54E3-A272-0EF74757846F"><title>Description</title> <p> </p> <p>The

Feature Manager provides the functionality to </p> <ul>

<li id="GUID-946849BE-FD32-5C15-A14D-652962D7B907"><p>query features and report

on them, </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-97184F11-834D-510B-A9C5-685E87ADC256"><p>modify the status of

features, and </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-A7A9F8C0-21A1-5017-9DEA-334DA2345692"><p>set up notification

of changes to features. </p> </li>

</ul> </section>

<section id="GUID-B0C40DD9-CE3F-5855-AD6C-C56140CB27FF"><title>Components</title> <ul>

<li id="GUID-854A0F17-CC56-5673-9BA4-49E2D36AEEA2"><p>Feature Manager Client

provides the complete functionality required for feature management. </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-FEF9EA74-AC3B-507E-BFCA-599CEEBA3C4D"><p>Feature Manager Server

maintains the table containing the list of features available on the device. </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-EB3A9157-0659-5288-8FB8-18379EB2EE62"><p>Feature Discovery provides

the functionality to discover if a feature or feature set is available but

not to enable, disable or modify features. </p> </li>

</ul> <p>Feature flags were formerly managed using the Feature Registry component,

which has now been deprecated. The old Feature Registry API calls continue

to be supported, but the old implementation has been scrapped in favour of

wrapper functions which call Feature Manager. </p> </section>

<section><title>Using Feature Manager</title> <p>Feature flags, which are

held in the feature database, track changes to the status of features. It

is important to know that modifications through Feature Manager do not modify

the features themselves, though feature flags may be used by other components

which actually modify features. </p> <p>The Feature Manager provides the functionality

to: </p> <ul>

<li id="GUID-9D4F29E1-3E82-5527-8F49-C77346235CF2"><p>report the availability

of feature flags, </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-6A2B037D-46C6-595A-A9BF-3FBEBE4A063B"><p>enable and disable feature

flags, </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-262022F4-D777-5FD1-961E-6FDF22E77BC0"><p>modify the status of

feature flags and the data associated with them, and </p> </li>

<li id="GUID-893BC294-3503-5020-A507-0CBC455CB269"><p>set up notification

of changes to the status of feature flags. </p> </li>

</ul> <p>The <xref href="GUID-1A22E574-831B-5D00-98BD-0DFFA9CC09A0.dita">Feature

Manager Tutorial</xref> provides detailed instructions on how to perform these

tasks. </p> </section>

</conbody><related-links>

<link href="GUID-1568493D-0384-5FBD-816B-60A4817CEF0C.dita"><linktext>Feature Manager

Guide</linktext></link>

<link href="GUID-6F716E31-490E-5CA1-871A-D8D1661E3078.dita"><linktext>Feature Manager

Installation                 Tutorial</linktext></link>

<link href="GUID-D01C4682-619E-501E-8992-9F7FA35D7682.dita"><linktext>Feature Manager

Modification                 Tutorials</linktext></link>

<link href="GUID-1A22E574-831B-5D00-98BD-0DFFA9CC09A0.dita"><linktext>Feature Manager

Querying                 Tutorials</linktext></link>

<link href="GUID-910780A3-D6AB-5EE2-966A-5F228AC5804F.dita"><linktext>Feature Manager

Notification                 Tutorials</linktext></link>

<link href="GUID-F2489DE2-18E2-5C5B-A174-49B5B7A64A7C.dita"><linktext>Feature Manager

Reporting                 Tutorials</linktext></link>

</related-links></concept>