Creating mappings

You create mappings between the tables of the staging database and the hierarchies of the application model.

The fields for each mapping depend on how the source data is structured. Source data can be held in one of these types of structure:

  • Parent-child
  • Level-based
  • Flat

The same data can be stored in different ways, so you must have knowledge of your source data. For example, a list of geographical areas could be stored in a table with a hierarchical, parent-child structure, or in a table with a level-based structure.

This table shows a level-based structure of areas. The three levels are Continent, Region , and Country.

Continent Region Country
Europe Central Slovakia
Europe Central Czech Republic
Europe Scandinavia Finland
Europe Scandinavia Sweden
United States Northeast Massachusetts
United States Northeast New York
United States Midwest Michigan
United States Midwest Minnesota

This table shows the same data in a parent-child structure

Parent Child 1 Child 2
Europe
Central Europe
Slovakia
Czech Republic
Scandinavia
Finland
Sweden
United States
Northeast
Massachusetts
New York
Midwest
Michigan
Minnesota

An example of data with a flat structure is a list of currencies and their codes.