Creating, Editing, and Deleting Survivorship Rules

Survivorship rules determine which properties and relationships get merged from an accepted match candidate into a matching node in a node type during a match and merge or deduplication operation.

Survivorship Rules Overview

While matching rules determine which nodes might match other existing nodes, survivorship rules specify which properties and relationships from the source node get merged into the target nodes in a viewpoint after the match has been confirmed.

The source and target nodes are determined by the type of match operation being run:

  • When matching and merging request items, the source nodes are the incoming nodes in the request, and the target nodes are the existing nodes in that node type. See Understanding Matching and Merging Request Items.
  • When deduplicating nodes in a viewpoint, the source nodes are the nodes from the registered data source that you are evaluating, and the target nodes are the nodes that you are matching against and that you will be merging into during the merge operation after you accept a match . See Reviewing Deduplication Results and Applying Changes.

When you create a survivorship rule, for each property in the node type for which you are creating the rule you can choose one of these options:

  • None (default): The property value in the source node is ignored during a merge.
  • Copy: The property value in the source node is copied to the target node during a merge.

    Note:

    Relationship properties are copied only if the parent is also copied from the source node in the survivorship rule.
  • Transform: The property value in the source node is transformed using an expression that you enter and then copied to the target node during a merge.

    Note:

    The Transform operation is supported for unregistered data sources only. For registered data sources, use the node type converter on the target node to configure how property values are transformed from the source and copied to the target. See Working with Node Type Converters.

    Tip:

    Transforming property values can be helpful in these use cases:
    • You have a null value for a property in the source node that you want to replace with a non-null value.
    • You want to perform a lookup of a source value to a target value using a lookup set.
    • You want to populate additional properties that are not directly loaded from the data source.

Considerations

You must have Owner or Metadata Manager permission on the application or dimension that contains the node type in order to create, edit, or delete survivorship rules.

Creating Survivorship Rules

  1. Inspect the node type that you want to create a survivorship rule for. See Inspecting a Node Type.
  2. Navigate to the Rules tab, and on the Survivorship sub-tab click Create.
  3. Enter a name and, optionally, a description for the survivorship rule.
  4. In the Data Sources drop down menu, select the data source that will use this survivorship rule, and then click Create. The data source that you select must have at least one matching rule enabled for the node type in order to use it for a survivorship rule.

    Note:

    To use survivorship rules when deduplicating nodes in a viewpoint, create the survivorship rule for the registered data source of the application that contains the viewpoint that you are deduplicating.

Editing Survivorship Rules

After creating a survivorship rule, you can edit it to change the name or description, enable it, or edit the properties to merge after a match is accepted. You cannot edit the data source for a survivorship rule after it has been created.

  1. Inspect the survivorship rule that you want to edit.
  2. On the General tab, click Edit and perform an action:
    • (Optional) Edit the name or description.
    • Use the Enabled checkbox to enable or disable the survivorship rule.

      Note:

      Only one survivorship rule for a data source can be enabled for a particular node type.
  3. On the Definition tab, for each property in the node type, select an option:
    • None: Ignores the property value for this property during the merge.
    • Copy: Merges the property value from the source node to the target node during a merge.

      Note:

      If the property that you are copying is not editable for this node type, a Caution caution icon icon is displayed.
    • Transform: Transforms the property value from the source node and then merges it to the target node during a merge.

      After you select Transform, click Edit Expression expression builder icon in the Transform column to open the expression editor and create an expression. Then, click Apply to return to the Definition tab. For help on transforming properties, see Property Transformations.

  4. Click Save.

Deleting Survivorship Rules

  1. Inspect the node type that contains the survivorship rule that you want to delete.
  2. From the Rules tab, select the Survivorship sub-tab, and then click Edit.
  3. In the Action column click the Action menu action menu icon for the rule that you want to delete, and then click Delete.
  4. Click Yes to confirm that you want to delete the survivorship rule.

    Note:

    You cannot delete a survivorship rule that has any match results that have already been merged using the rule. If the survivorship rule is no longer needed, you can disable it instead.