Developing a Taxonomy Catalogue

[former_member217396]

Hi,

we've got a new requirement, to use a taxonomy catalogue in our CDM models.

The idea is simple:

1. There is a global taxonomy catalogue defined for the companys DWH

2. When modelling the CDM-part of the DWH, some of the entity attributes shall be linked to a particular element in the taxonomy catalogue, or even better, the user shall be able to select (from a drop-down list) the element he wants to link that entity attribute to. The Catalogue and Taxonomy fields on entity attribute level can be implemented using extended attributes. But how to link from that attributes to the taxonomy catalogue?

Example:

My biggest problem at the moment is the fact, I'm not even sure how put such a "list" into PD.

Is there a possibility to work with embedded Excels, and somehow link (via Traceability Links) to a particular cell in that Excel document?

Thanks for any ideas.

Cheers,

Rafal

[former_member200945]

Sounds like you want to associate Taxonomy Catalogue to entity attribute.

You can create an extension in CDM to get it work.

1) Open your CDM. Go to Model->Extensions. Click Add a Row icon. It creates

ExtensionDefintion_1. Click OK

2) Double click ExtensionDefintion_1.  Right click Profile. Select Add MetaClasses.

    In PdCDM tab, check EntitiyAttribute. Click OK.

   A new extension object called EntityAttribute is created.

3) Right click EntityAttribute. Select New->Extended Attribute. Rename the new attribute

to  Taxonomy. Reset Data type based on original Taxonomy's data type.

4) Repeat 2), 3) to create extended attribute Catalogue

Now open any entity's property. Click Attributes tab. Select an attribute and bring up its

property. You can see Extended Attribute tab. Click it. The two attributes list there.

5) Now we need set value for these two attributes.

    You can output  Taxonomy Catalogue to excel.

   On Powerdesigner side, write to vbscript to read the excel file.

   Use SetExtendedAttribute to set the value.

This is an example on  how to call SetExtendedAttribute

set model=ActiveModel

set entities=model.entities

for each e in entities

  set attributes=e.Attributes

  for each att in attributes

     att.SetExtendedAttribute "Catalogue","The value from Excel"

  next

next

[GeorgeMcGeachie]

I suggest you look into using the Glossary for your taxonomy, and using extended collections or traceability links to connect modelling objects to the Glossary. I've done some of this with a client recently. Traceability links are easier to use, but you'll need more model checks to validate what's been done.

Alternatively you could use a CDM with packages and data items for your taxonomy, but that wouldn't allow you to use the glossary for as-you-type naming standards.

[GeorgeMcGeachie]

By the way, you can import Glossary entries from Excel

[former_member217396]

Hi George,

I was thinking about using the Glossary for this, but ... in the Glossary, the Terms have to have unique names across the whole Glossary... and this is simply impossible for a Taxonomy Catalogue, as you can have repeating elements in different catalogues (like in my example): AWG is defined in the catalogue K_DT_PAYCUR and K_M_TRN_TYPE.

So I can't use Categories to represent the Catalogues... and this would be the most intuitive way to do this...

Maybe I could build a structure of related Terms (using synonyms to make it more understandable for the users) and represent the Catalogues as Terms? This would be possible, but is it user friendly?

I'm still searching for the "best practice" examples...

Regards,

Rafal

[GeorgeMcGeachie]

How about using the Glossary Categories to provide the main taxonomy hierarchy, with each Term being defined once, then adding 'Catalogue' as an extended Object with a collection of Terms?

A more complex model:

• each term exists once, so you would define 'AWG' using the business name for it
• create an extended sub-object owned by Term, with a mandatory link to a Catalogue object