Survivor Helper

The survivor helper defines a list of fields on which survivor calculation is performed, and thus the list of fields included in the SBR. Each field is called a candidate field. For each candidate field, you specify whether to use the default survivor calculation strategy or a custom strategy. The survivor helper must list each field contained in the SBR; any fields that are not listed here will not be populated in the SBR.

For each field, you can specify system fields to be taken into consideration as well as a specific survivorship strategy. There are three basic strategies provided by Sun Master Index to determine survivorship for each field. You can define and implement custom strategies.

• Default Strategy

• Weighted Strategy

• Union Strategy

Survivor Helper Default Strategy

This strategy maps fields directly from the local system records to the SBR. When you specify the default survivor strategy for a field, you must also specify the parameter that defines the source system. For example, if you specify the default survivor calculator for the field “Person.LastName” and define the preferred system as “SystemA”, the last name field in the SBR is always taken from SystemA (unless the value is overridden in the EDM).

The default survivor strategy is com.stc.eindex.survivor.impl.DefaultSurvivorStrategy.

Survivor Helper Weighted Strategy

This strategy is the most complex survivor strategy, and uses a combination of weighted calculations to determine the most reliable source of data for each field. This strategy is highly customizable and you can define which calculation or set of calculations to use for each field. The calculations can be based on the update date of the data, system reliability, and agreement between systems. In the default configuration of the file, the calculations are defined in the WeightedCalculator section of the file.

The weighted survivor strategy is com.stc.eindex.survivor.impl.WeightedSurvivorStrategy. You can define general weighted calculations to be performed by default for each field, and you can define specialized calculations to be performed for specific fields.

Survivor Helper Union Strategy

This strategy combines the data from all source systems to populate the fields in the SBR for which this strategy is specified. For example, if you store aliases for person names in the database, you want to store all possible alias records and not just the “best” alias information. In order to do this, specify the union strategy for the alias object. This means that all alias information from all source systems is stored in the SBR.

The union strategy is applied to entire objects rather than to fields. This strategy combines all child objects from an enterprise objects source systems to populate the SBR. If the source systems contain two or more instances of a child object with the same unique key (such as two home telephone numbers), the union strategy only populates the most current child object in the SBR. For example, if the union strategy is assigned to the address object and each address object is identified by a unique key (such as the address type), the SBR only contains the most current address record of each address type (for example, one home address, one office address, and so on).

The union strategy is com.stc.eindex.survivor.impl.UnionSurvivorStrategy.