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Introducing entity subtypes in IBM InfoSphere Master Information Hub

Write entity subtypes and supporting services

Stephanie J. Hazlewood (stephanie@ca.ibm.com), Software Architect, IBM

Stephanie Hazlewood is an architect on the IBM Master Data Management Server team at the Toronto Lab and leads the Advanced Technology (AdTech) team for MDM. She has contributed to the core design and development of the MDM Server product since its first release over eight years ago. Along with Master Data Management architecture and solutions, her expertise includes Knowledge Management (KM) software and practices, and virtual communities of learning. Stephanie worked previously for DWL and the University of Toronto's Center for Applied Cognitive Science (now known as Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology), and holds a Masters degree from the University of Western Ontario.

Lin Qiao (linqiao@ca.ibm.com), Sofrware Architect, IBM

Lin Qiao is an architect on the InfoSphere Master Data Management Server team at the Toronto Lab and has been with the product team for over seven years. She has designed and lead the development of a number of key MDM Server features and worked previously for DWL.

Summary: In this tutorial, learn how to implement entity subtypes and supporting services for IBM® InfoSphere™ Master Data Management Server and InfoSphere Master Information Hub. Using an entity subtyping framework allows you to introduce new entities that may be processed by the services of their parent entities, which helps achieve service interoperability and extensibility for a new domain created using Master Information Hub.

Date: 28 Jan 2010
Level: Intermediate
PDF: A4 and Letter (292 KB | 25 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

Activity: 19337 views
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Before you start

When you are defining new entities for a solution using InfoSphere Master Information Hub or InfoSphere Master Data Management Server, you may have a requirement that demand services be able to process entities having a supertype-subtype relationship. Entities are distinct if they have no attributes in common. Entities that share some attributes, including an identifier (primary key), but not others may be modelled as having a common supertype. Although these entities may share attributes, they are not the same. For example, humans and plants share attributes that serve to define them as living things (generalization), but the attributes that they do not share further specialize this definition in ways that would require the different treatment of each. In the case of an MDM or Master Information Hub solution, the business may require entities participating in the special supertype-subtype relationship participate in a common set of services, but result in being processed by those services in different ways. This tutorial shows you how to implement new type hierarchies and define associated services that allow for this specialized processing.

Objectives

Understand when to use subtypes and when to use data extensions.
Understand how to create an entity supertype, subtypes, and associated services to allow the processing of each.
Gain insight into the structure of Master Information Hub entities and services, and the possibilities you have to customize the implementation of a subtyped entity and its services.
Step through the creation of subtyped entities and three service types that may consume them (add, update, and inquiry by identifier) with performance considerations in mind.
Step through the creation of an extension subtype for a pre-existing type hierarchy and corresponding services developed as part of a Master Information Hub solution.

Prerequisites

This tutorial is written for IT architects and IT specialists with an interest in learning more about how to design and develop services for InfoSphere Master Information Hub. This tutorial assumes that you have experience developing solutions using the InfoSphere Master Information Hub/MDM Server Workbench. More specifically, it assumes:

You can use and configure a development environment using the Development Environment Setup Tool (DEST)
You are familiar with creating, customizing, and deploying addition and extensions to entities using the InfoSphere Master Information Hub/MDM Server Workbench

System requirements

To complete this tutorial, your system should meet the following requirements:

2GB memory or more
15GB free disk space
A system having a Windows operating system on which the IBM Rational® Software Architect, Version 7.5.4 for IBM WebSphere® Software (or newer) can be installed with the Master Information Hub Workbench

This tutorial has been developed for use with Version 9.0 of InfoSphere Master Information Hub and InfoSphere Master Data Management Server.

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