Global identifiers

A global identifier is a unique code that is used to identify a business object in IBM® Supply Chain Intelligence Suite.

When integrating data from external sources, the user might notice that their business objects are likely to have unique identifiers. These identifiers can be mapped as global identifiers within the IBM Supply Chain Intelligence Suite's new business objects. This linking mechanism allows traceability back to the origin.

After the user uploads object upsert events data with global identifiers, IBM Supply Chain Intelligence Suite generates unique internal identifiers per object type and tenant.

The following code snippet is an example of how you can add globalIdentifiers to JSON data that you are preparing for import,

"globalIdentifiers": [
              {
                "name": "house.houseID"
                "value": "77777777"
              }
]

name: A string that represents the name of the global identifier.
value: A string that represents the value of the global identifier.

There are three methods for data ingestion: CSV import, JSON import, and GraphQL mutations. JSON and GraphQL mutations allow for specifying global identifiers directly. However, CSV imports require them to be constructed during ingestion by using local attributes.

Global identifiers in JSON uploads act as a bridge between a users' familiar data from another system and IBM Supply Chain Intelligence Suite object IDs. If the user has the object ID, he can use it directly for updates without using the global identifier. This scenario is only applicable for an object that is already created. During the initial import, the global identifiers are required.