Using Virtual Metadata in Models

In addition to creating models using metadata that is sourced from the Relationship Analysis Client Toolbox and stored locally, you can also use virtual metadata that comes from a Metadata Insights source in your model. Using this feature you can link virtual entities (via federated data that does not exist in Data Hub) to physical entities (which do exist in Data Hub). Federated data can come from an application such as Salesforce or Siebel, a database, or even a flat file, among other sources. The following example depicts how you might approach such a scenario.

You can also create models that consist solely of virtual entities; however, this topic focuses on a combination of physical and virtual entities and assumes that you are adding virtual entities to an existing model that contains physical entities.

1. From the Model ribbon on the Home tab, click Open and select the model for which you want to add virtual metadata.
2. Click the Model Detail tab and Select Open Metadata.
3. Select an entity icon from one of the groups in the Toolbox and drag it onto the model canvas. The Add Entity Type dialog box appears.
4. Enter the type of entity you are creating, such as "Person" or "Firm", in the Type field.
5. Check the Virtual box.
6. Select the Data Source that is providing the federated (or virtual) data. This is the Virtual Data Source you created in Metadata Insights and subsequently established a connection to in Management Console.
7. Select the Schema where the table you want to use resides.
8. Select the name of the baseview or metaview Table whose properties you want to use for this entity. The grid will populate with that table's names and types.
9. Select which property should be the Primary Key. The data in this field for each entity will become its label and its _stp_id within the model. For example, if a property named "Customer ID" is selected as the primary key, the label for each entity of this type will be its customer ID.
10. Select which properties you want to include in the entity.
11. Click OK. You will see a blue star attached to the icons for the entities you created; this star denotes that these entities are virtual.
12. Repeat this process until you have added all the entity types, both virtual and physical, for your model.
13. With two or more entities on the canvas, click the Relationships tab in the Toolbox. The <New> icon will be selected by default.
14. On the canvas, click and drag from the source entity to the target entity and release the mouse. The Add Relationship Label dialog box appears.
15. Enter a Label for the new relationship. This label describes the relationship between the two entities you are connecting. For example, if you were building a model of insurance data, the label might be "Visited" (between a patient entity and provider entity) or "Billed" (between a provider entity and an insurance company entity).
16. The Virtual box will be checked if either or both of the entities connected by this relationship are virtual. It will be unchecked if both entities are physical.
17. Select the name of the baseview or metaview Join table whose properties you want to use for this relationship. The grid will populate with that table's names and types. If you do not have a separate table that links these two entities, as is often the case for one-to-one relationships, you can reuse the table you selected for the virtual entity that is being linked. In this case, you will choose the field that will be used as the primary key for the Source Link ID and Target Link ID in step 18. If you are linking two virtual entities, you can reuse either table as long as the source entity ID and target entity ID are the properties that were chosen as primary keys in the entity metadata.
18. Select the Source entity ID and the Target entity ID. These are properties of the source and target entities that have the values that will be matched in the join table. For example, if you were using insurance data and you had a source entity of medical providers and a target entity of patients treated by those providers, you might select "TIN" for the source and "ClaimNo" for the target.
19. Select the Source Link ID and the Target Link ID from the Properties table. These are the fields in the join table that will be matched to the properties selected in step 19. Using the insurance data example, you might select something like "ProviderID" for the source ID and "ClaimID" for the target ID.
20. Select which fields from the join table that you want to include as properties of the relationship.
21. Click OK. The relationship appears between the entities.
22. Click Save and enter the name of your new model in the Save As dialog box.