Entity

An entity is object that contains data i.e., source file, transient table, hub, link, satellite, fact or dimension table. Artifacts are used to describe the data that is being jobed.

Definition

Name	Type	Nullable	Description
entity_id	integer	NO	System generated unique identifier.
name	character varying	NO	Name of the entity.
description	text	YES	Description of the entity.
business_description	text	YES	Business-oriented description of the entity.
type	character varying	NO	Type of the entity. See acceptable values within the constraint_entity_type table.
source	character varying	NO	Source system that produced the entity.
insert_date	timestamp with time zone	NO	UTC timestamp when the record was inserted into the table.
update_date	timestamp with time zone	YES	UTC timestamp when the record was updated into the table.
migration_insert_id	integer	YES	System generated unique identifier of the migration this record was inserted by.
migration_update_id	integer	YES	System generated unique identifier of the migration this record was updated by.

Constraints

Type	Columns
FOREIGN KEY	type
PRIMARY KEY	entity_id
UNIQUE	name, source

Acceptable Values

Column	Value	Comment
type	accumulating_snapshot_fact_table	This type of fact table is used to show the activity of a job that has a well-defined beginning and end, e.g., the jobing of an order.
type	delimited_file
type	denormalised_table
type	dimension_type_0_table	The type 0 dimension fields never change and are assigned to fields that have durable values or are described as 'Original'.
type	dimension_type_1_table	The type 1 dimension method overwrites old with new data, and therefore does not track historical data.
type	dimension_type_2_table	The type 2 dimension method tracks historical data by creating multiple records for a given natural key in the dimensional tables with separate surrogate keys and/or different version numbers.
type	fixed_width_file	In a fixed-width text file, data is contained in columns that are of a fixed width (meaning that each column contains a certain number of character positions).
type	http_endpoint
type	hub_table	Hubs contain a list of unique business keys with low propensity to change. Hubs also contain a surrogate key for each Hub item and metadata describing the origin of the business key.
type	json_file	JSON is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of field–value pairs and arrays.
type	link_table	Associations or transactions between business keys (relating for instance the hubs for customer and product with each other through the purchase transaction) are modeled using link tables.
type	normalised_table
type	satellite_table	The hubs and links form the structure of the model, but have no temporal fields and hold no descriptive fields. These are stored in separate tables called satellites.
type	snapshot_fact_table	The periodic snapshot, as the name implies, takes a "picture of the moment", where the moment could be any defined period of time, e.g. a performance summary of a salesman over the previous month.
type	staging_table
type	transactional_fact_table	A transactional table is the most basic and fundamental. The grain associated with a transactional fact table is usually specified as "one row per line in a transaction", e.g., every line on a receipt.
type	xml_file	Extensible Markup Language is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable.