Entity linker and relationship linker process

When talking about linking, it is important to understand a couple of internal processes that are associated with entity management: the entity linker (EntLinker) and relationship linker (RelLinker).

When members are created or updated in the MDM database, the data is placed in a work queue table (mpi_entique_*). The data is then processed by the EntLinker. After the EntLinker completes processing, the RelLinker processes the same record from the entity queue.

You can dictate whether an MDM operational server uses both an entity manager and relationship manager by setting the relationshipLinkerEnabled property in the com.ibm.mdm.mds.entity.manager.cfg file. (The entity manager is automatically set when you install the InfoSphere® MDM operational server.)

Rules can be defined (either directly in InfoSphere MDM Workbench or by certain user actions in the Inspector application or APIs) that control how certain members or relationships are handled and linked by the MDM operational server.