7.3 Create Data Entities

You can manually create or update the Data Entities through the Oracle Data Transforms interface.

Data entities should possess the corresponding objects in the source connection to be used as a source in a data flow. Usually the import process makes sure that these objects are in coordination. However, whenever you manually create or update Data Entities always make sure to check if both the definitions are in coordination with each other.

When you use a Data Entity as a target then it doesn't have to exist previously in the target connection and can be created as a part of Data Flow execution.

To create a new Data Entity:

1. From the left pane of the Home page, click the Data Entities tab.

   Data Entities page appears.

2. Click Create Data Entity, to create a new data entity.

   Create Data Entity page appears.

3. In the Name text box, enter the name of the new Data Entity that you are creating.
4. From the Connection drop-down, select the required connection from which you wish to add the newly created Data Entity.

   Note:

   Oracle Financials Cloud connections are not listed here because you cannot manually create data entities for such connections. You can only import data entities from Oracle Financials Cloud REST endpoints using the Import Data Entities page. See Import Data Entities.
5. In the Schema drop-down, all schema corresponding to the selected connection are listed in two groups.
   • New Database Schema (ones that you've not imported from before) and
   • Existing Database Schema (ones that you've imported from before and are potentially replacing data entities).

   From the Schema drop-down, select the required schema.

   Note:

   For Oracle Object Storage connections, the Schema drop-down lists the name of the bucket that you specified in the URL when you created the connection.
6. From the Type drop-down, select the data entity type.
   • Table: To define the table structure for the newly created Data Entity, click the + icon to add columns. For each column, you can specify parameters such as Name, Data Type, Length, Scale, Not Null. Double click on the cell to configure the value.

     Click the 'x' icon, to delete a row. Click the Up and Down arrows to sort the table rows.

   • Inline View: To create the data entity using inline code, enter the Select statement in the Query tab. For example, SELECT * FROM CUSTOMER. Click Validate.

     The Columns tab displays a read-only list of the columns that the query returns. Click the Preview tab to see the column data.

7. In the Tags text box, enter a tag of your choice. You can use tags to filter the Data Entities displayed in the Data Entity Page.
8. For Oracle Object Storage connections, this page displays the following options:
   • Contents – Select the CSV file that contains the data you want to import. The metadata displayed in the preview table, such as the data type and length of columns, is based on the first row of the CSV file. Make sure that the CSV file has a header line. The header should contain only alphanumeric characters and no special characters.
   • Group Files – Select this check box if you want to group data from multiple CSV files into one data entity. For example, say you want to merge data from Employee_Data1.csv, Employee_Data2.csv, and Employee_Data3.csv into a single data entity.

     If you want to upload the CSV files using Windows, make sure that you first convert the files to Unix format to avoid character encoding issues during grouping.

   • Resource Name – Use this option along with Group Files. Enter the value you want to use to identify the files. The resource name should be a regular expression. You can use only an asterisk (*) as a wildcard character in the resource name. For example, Employee_Data*.csv.
9. For Oracle database connections, you can mark the data entities as a feature group. Expand Advanced Options and click the Treat as Feature Group checkbox.
10. Click Save.

    The new Data Entity is created.