Editing Metadata

This feature enables you to modify entity types and relationship labels. It also enables you to add, modify, and delete properties of those entity types and relationship labels.

With Relationship Analysis Client open, click the Open button.
Select a model from the list by clicking it.
Click the Model Detail tab.
Click Open Metadata.
Select the entity type or relationship label you want to modify.
Click the Entities or Relationships button on the Editing ribbon in the Data tab. You can also right-click the entity or relationship and select Edit Entities or Edit Relationships. The Modify Entity or Modify Relationship dialog box appears.
Update the Properties fields as necessary.
Click OK.
Save the model.

You cannot modify or remove metadata elements if the model you are updating contains any of those elements. To determine if your model contains elements you want to modify or delete, see the example below.

Note: You can use the Schema Changes function in Model Modifications to delete entity types, entity type properties, relationship labels and relationship label properties; you can also use it to modify index types.

Example

Let's say you are editing a model of insurance data that includes the following elements:

Entity Type	Insurance Company Provider Patient
Relationship Label	Treated Filed Claim

And let's say those elements have the following properties:

Insurance Company	Name (e.g., Blue Cross Blue Shield)
Provider	Name (e.g., Dr. Marcus Welby, Mayo Clinic, etc.) ZIP (e.g., 20616)
Patient	Birthdate (e.g., 2/11/65) Name (e.g., John Smith) ZIP (e.g., 20616)
Treated	Date of Service (e.g., 11/27/14) Diagnosis (e.g., Bronchitis)
Filed Claim	Patient Name (e.g., John Smith) Date of Claim (e.g., 12/01/14) Amount (e.g., $247)

If your model has been populated with entities for Blue Cross Blue Shield and United Healthcare, as well as entities of doctors or hospitals (as providers), you will not be able to delete those entity types. If you tried to delete those entity types, you would receive an error message telling you how many entities of that type exist in the model. You also could not modify existing properties for those entity types. This would be shown in the Add Entity window by the Type and Index Type fields being grayed out for both Insurance Company and Provider entity types. If your model contains only those two entity types, you would still be able to delete the Patient entity type and modify its properties because no Patient entities exist yet in the model. You would also still be able to add properties to the Insurance Company and Provider entity types.

Likewise, if your model contained Filed Claim relationship labels between the providers and insurance companies, and those relationships included Date of Claim properties but not Amount properties, you could modify or delete the Amount property in the Filed Claim relationship label, but you could not modify or delete the Date of Claim property. This would be shown in the Add Relationship window by the Type field for the Date of Claim property being grayed out. You would still be able to add properties to the Filed Claim relationship label.

If you are unsure as to whether your model contains the elements that you want to modify or remove, you can view the contents of the model on the Model Detail tab within the Open Model dialog box.

With Relationship Analysis Client open, click the Open button.
Select a model from the list by clicking it.
Click the Model Detail tab.

This tab will show you the details of your model. The example below shows in red boxes that there are two occurrences of the Insurance Company entity type and one occurrence of the Provider entity type, but zero occurrences of the Patient entity type. It also shows in blue boxes that there are two occurrences of the Filed Claim relationship label coming into Insurance Company entity types as well as two occurrences going out of Provider relationship types, but no occurrences of the Treated relationship label. Based on this information, you can determine that you would not be able to delete the Insurance Company or Provider entity types or modify their existing properties. Likewise, you could not delete or modify the Filed Claim relationship label. You would be able to modify or delete the Patient entity type and the Treated relationship label.