The import process consists of multiple steps that you complete
to import metadata into the metadata repository.
Metadata is data that describes the content, structure, and other characteristics
of an original data set. You can access information in the metadata repository
from any component in the suite, which means that metadata can be shared by
multiple suite components. You use metadata in all your analysis projects
to describe the data that you want to analyze and to use as a foundation to
access inferences. You also use metadata to create source-to-target mapping
specifications.
The following image shows the metadata import process:
- Data store
- To begin the import process, you select a host computer and a data store
that contains the metadata. You defined the host computer or data store when
you configured the resources that you want to work with. You must configure
resources before you can import metadata.
- Identify
- After you select a data store, you need to identify the metadata that
it contains. When you identify metadata, the system connects to the data store
and then displays a hierarchy of the objects within the data store such as
directories, tables, or files. A hierarchy is a list of objects that are displayed
at specific levels depending on the size of the object. For example, you select
a data store to view a schema within the data store. To view a table, you
then select the schema to view the tables within the schema. You must identify
down to the column level in order to import metadata.
- Import
- After you identify the metadata in a data store, you select the objects
that you want and then import the objects into the repository. For example,
you might want to import specific tables rather than all of the tables in
the data store.
- Metadata repository
- The metadata repository contains imported metadata, analysis results,
and system configurations, and can be accessed by authorized users from any
component in the suite.
- Register
- After you import metadata into the repository, you must associate the
metadata with the project or multiple projects that you want to use it in.
You register metadata to your project at the data store, table, file, or column
level.
IBM InfoSphere Foundation Tools, IBM InfoSphere Information Server, Version 8.5
This topic is also in the IBM InfoSphere Information Analyzer User's Guide.
