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Virtualizing data with business terms in Data Virtualization in default virtualization mode
Last updated: Nov 26, 2024
Virtualizing data with business terms in Data Virtualization in default virtualization mode
If you have data assets in your catalogs that are connected directly to your data sources and that have business terms assigned, you can name your virtual tables and their columns to match the naming of the business terms when you virtualize those data assets in Data Virtualization.

Before you begin

The creator of the Data Virtualization instance must complete the following tasks.
  1. Enable personal credentials. Navigate to Menu > Administration > Account and enable Personal credentials.
  2. Create an instance of the Cloud Object Storage service and configure IBM Knowledge Catalog to use it. For more information, see Configuring Cloud Object Storage for project and catalog creation.
  3. Authorize the Watson Knowledge Catalog service to access data in your Data Virtualization instance.
    1. Log in to your IBM® Cloud account where IBM Knowledge Catalog and Data Virtualization instances are provisioned.
    2. From the menu, select Manage > Access (IAM) > Authorizations.
    3. Select Create + to create a new service-to-service authorization.
    4. Select IBM Knowledge Catalog service as the Source and Data Virtualization service as the Target.
    5. Select DataAccess role for service access.
    6. Click Authorize.
  4. Ensure that at least one data class exists in your account under Menu > Governance > Data classes.
  5. Ensure that the user who runs profiling runs it from the same IBM Cloud account that the Data Virtualization instance belongs to.
These instructions assume that you completed the following prerequisites.

About this task

Publishing Data Virtualization objects to the catalog is an entry point to governing your data. One of the key benefits is that you can apply business context or meaning to technical data.

Data Virtualization uses terms in the business glossary in Watson Knowledge Catalog to govern your virtual data. You use business terms to standardize definitions of business concepts so that your data is described in a uniform and easily understood way across your organization. Data Virtualization can automatically use existing term assignments on data assets while it virtualizes that data.

Business terms can describe the contents of the data, the sensitivity of the data, or other aspects of the data.

Important: These instructions apply only if the service is set to the default virtualization mode. To enforce the use of business terms for naming virtual objects and their columns, see Enforcing business terms to virtualize.

Procedure

To govern your virtual data with business terms, follow these steps.

  1. On the navigation menu, click Data > Data virtualization.
    The service menu opens to the Data sources page by default.
  2. On the service menu, click Virtualization > Virtualize and click the Tables tab.

    • The list of connections appears in the default Explore view. Click a connection, schema, or table to select it and preview the contents.

    • The list of available tables in your connections appears in the List view. You can filter the listed tables by adding filters on the Data sources page. Additionally, you can search for tables by name, schema, column, or business term.

    • Click a business term to view term information in Watson Knowledge Catalog.
  3. Select the table that you want to virtualize and click Add to cart.
  4. Click View cart to view your selections.
    From this window, you can also edit the table and schema names, remove a selection from your cart, or edit column names in a table.

    To edit a table name, you can select any of the business terms that are assigned to the table. Thus, the virtual table name matches the business term that is assigned to the source table automatically.

    To edit column names, follow these steps.

    1. In the object action menu, click Edit column names.
      Note: In strict mode, column names are not editable.
    2. Edit column names as needed or select a business term to match the column name.
      If you want to replace all column names with business terms, check the Replace all columns with business terms box.

      If a column has more than one business term assigned, Data Virtualization selects the first business term that was assigned to rename columns.

      You can select business terms to rename columns. However, you cannot edit column names in a table.

    3. Select columns that you want to include in your virtual table.
      Note: You must select the checkbox of the column name for changes to take effect when you click Apply. Changes that you make to columns that are not selected will not take effect when you click Apply.
    4. Click Apply.
  5. Select the appropriate option to assign the virtualized table.
    Assign to When to use this option
    Project Select Project if you created the virtual table to use in a specific project. Then, choose the appropriate project. The table also appears in Virtualized data.
    Virtualized data Select Virtualized data if the table was not created to use in a specific project. This setting is the default if no projects exist.
  6. Specify a schema in the Schema field.
    You can also create a schema by following these steps.
    • If you have the Data Virtualization Engineer or User role, leave the Schema field as default to create a schema with your user ID.
    • If you have the Data Virtualization Manager role, leave the Schema field as default to create a schema with your user ID or enter the new schema name in the Schema field.
    For more information, see Creating schemas for virtual objects.
  7. Click Virtualize to complete the process.
    When the status window appears, you can select to view your virtualized data or virtualize more data.

Results

On the Virtualized data page, you can publish your virtual object to the catalog. For more information, see Publishing virtual data to the catalog in Data Virtualization.

Limitation: In the default virtualization mode (where you can see all tables, irrespective of business term assignments), when you navigate to the Virtualize page, the console appears to be loading the table list for a while when data sources added to Data Virtualization have tables with nonstandard types, such as NULL or OTHER. However, you can wait for the loading to complete to see a list of all tables, and you can preview, add to cart, edit columns, and virtualize any of the listed tables. Refresh is disabled, but you can refresh the page to trigger the reload of the available tables cache.