Understanding Metadata

The PeopleSoft Analytical Applications are supported by a framework of metadata. Metadata defines everything from table and data structures to rules for running processes. Metadata is central to the entire Analytical Applications product suite.

When you run PeopleSoft EPM processes, you require two types of input: your business data and the appropriate EPM metadata. Metadata provides an abstraction layer that enables technical users to establish dynamic relationships between tables, business users to easily identify the data that interests them without having to know the database structure, and administrators to manage processes.

Metadata is information that is used by processes and application engines to define rules and physical objects such as tables or trees. For instance, you may want an application engine to process certain columns from certain tables. Instead of entering a long SQL statement, you can define a datamap.

Image: EPM data and metadata

This diagram illustrates the relationship between data and metadata in EPM.

This topic discusses:

Metadata terms and objects.
SQL object ID.
Metadata utilities.

Metadata Terms and Objects

When we discuss metadata, we discuss:

Technical metadata.

Technical metadata defines the physical structures of EPM and enables users to work with EPM Analytical Applications without the need to understand the underlying structures. Examples are record metadata, tablemaps, datamaps, filters, and constraints.
Business intelligence metadata.

Business intelligence metadata defines how information is to be used to provide end users with the information they need to work most productively. An example of business intelligence metadata is the KPI Manager.
Operational metadata.

Operational metadata provides information about the flow of data through EPM. An example of operational metadata is extract, transform, and load (ETL) jobs.

The metadata structure that is used by the PeopleSoft EPM engines is built in several layers or levels, each dependent on the layer below it. The following table lists the metadata layers that are found in PeopleSoft EPM in order from the lowest to the highest level:

Metadata Object	Includes
Record metadata	Defines the lowest level of EPM metadata table objects. This is the foundation on which all other metadata is defined. Record metadata defines and identifies EPM data tables.
Tablemaps	Define the physical relationships (joins) between tables and are foundations for datamaps.
Datamaps	Built on tablemaps, datamaps are similar to table definitions in that they describe a logical view of the tables themselves. They enable you to select information from different tables that are specified in a tablemap and define it as if it were one entity or table.
Constraints	Built on datamaps and can use one or more filters to define your business processing rules.
Filters	Enable you to define what subset of data gets processed by or uses a specific business rule.

Image: EPM metadata, SQL

This diagram illustrates how PeopleSoft EPM metadata is nested to define a SQL statement.

The resulting SQL is SELECT (Datamap) FROM (Tablemap) WHERE (Constraints/Filters).

Other types of metadata and terms are:

ERP metadata

Examples are calendars, fiscal year, accounting period, business unit, and SetID.

See Understanding PeopleSoft EPM Business Rule Setups.

Data sets

Used as input for various engines.

Expressions

Enable you to create virtual columns that are made up of mathematical calculations based on actual fields on a table.

Tree metadata

Captures information about the trees that you have set up in PeopleSoft EPM. It is mainly used for reporting.

Rule metadata

Gathers the rules for PeopleSoft EPM engines based on the standard keys of SetID, business unit, model ID, and effective date. Rule metadata is used by PeopleSoft EPM engines to recursively determine inheritance rules between models.

Balancing rules

Enable you to track before and after amounts in the system.

Job totals

Define flash totals for data to be used as input or output to the different source or target tables in the system.

PF_RECONCILIATION engine

PF_RECONCILIATION uses the job totals and balancing rules metadata that you set up to validate balances.

Engine and job metadata

Delivered metadata for running jobs and jobstreams.

Not all the metadata objects are described in this topic. Refer to the following topics for information about rule and engine metadata and balancing rules and job totals metadata.

SQL Object ID

The SQL object ID is a system-generated number that identifies a SQL object that is generated by a metadata component and is stored in the PeopleSoft SQL repository. The prefix identifies the PeopleSoft EPM product, metadata object, and sequential number for each metadata object respectively, for example PF$_MR_140. Many setup pages within PeopleSoft EPM have a SQL object ID associated with the page definition.

Various types of SQL object ID prefixes exist, depending on the metadata object that you set up:

SQL Object ID Prefix	Metadata Object
PF$_MR_#	Record Metadata
PF$_RS_#	Record summary metadata
PF$_TM_#	Tablemaps
PF$_DM_#	Datamaps
PF$_EX_#	Expressions
PF$_CN_#	Constraints
PF$_RL_#	Rule Metadata
PF$_DS_#	Data sets
MD$_xxx_#	Data Manager. Where xxx is the rule ID.
AB$_yyy_xxx_#	ABM. Where yyy = SetID, and xxx = rule ID.

Metadata Utilities

Several utilities are available that you can use to search for and validate your metadata objects. These utilities include :

Metadata Search engine: Enables you to search for metadata objects based on the description.
Mass Validate: Enables you to check the validity of your metadata objects before running any PeopleSoft EPM engines or processes that depend on it.
Impact Analysis tool: Enables you to determine the interdependencies of metadata before you change objects.

These utilities are described later in this documentation.

Warning! Only an experienced user should make changes to existing metadata.