A thorough understanding of the table and data types at your disposal is
essential for properly creating and maintaining MDM repositories. This
section provides an introduction to these concepts, which will be
addressed again later in this guide.
An MDM repository consists of the following tables:
• Main tables. Every MDM repository has one or more main tables. A
main table contains primary information about a business object such
as a product or supplier. For example, a repository might contain
separate main tables for products and business partners. The
products main table would include an individual record for each
product and individual fields that apply to all products, such as SKU,
product name, product description, manufacturer, price, and
business partner. The business partner main table would then
include an individual record for each partner and individual fields for
each piece of information that describes the partner. Most of the time
you will be looking at information in a main table.
NOTE ►► When you first create a new MDM repository, MDM
automatically creates a main table named Products.
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MDMConsole
What is an MDM Repository?
• Subtables. An MDM repository can have any number of subtables.
A subtable is usually used as a lookup table to define the set of legal
values to which a corresponding lookup field in the main table can be
assigned; these tables hold the lookup information. For example, a
main table of an MDM repository of product information may include
a field called Manufacturer; the actual list of allowed manufacturer
names would be contained in a subtable. Only values that exist in
records of the subtable can be assigned to the value of the
corresponding lookup field in the main table.
DATA INTEGRITY ►► Lookup subtables are just one of the powerful
ways that MDM enforces data integrity in an MDM repository. The set
of legal values associated with lookup fields also makes the MDM
repository much more searchable, since a consistent set of values is
used across the entire repository.
• Object tables. Object tables, including the Images, Sounds, Videos,
Binary Objects, Text Blocks, Copy Blocks, Text HTMLs, and PDFs
tables, are a special type of lookup subtable, where each object table
is used to store a single type of object. You cannot store an object
directly in a main or subtable field in an MDM repository. Instead,
each object is defined or imported into the repository once and then
linked to a main or subtable field as a lookup into the object table of
that type.
DATA INTEGRITY ►► Object tables eliminate redundant information,
since each object appears only once in the MDM repository even if it is
linked to multiple records.
NOTE ►► When you first create a new MDM repository, MDM
automatically creates the single instance of each object table.
NOTE ►► You can also store text blocks directly in a large text field in
main and subtable records rather than as a lookup into a text block
subtable if you do not intend to reuse the blocks of text.
• Special tables. Special tables include the Image Variants, Masks,
Families, Relationships, Workflows, Named Searches, Tuples, Data
Groups, and Validation Groups tables.
NOTE ►► When you first create a new MDM repository, MDM
automatically creates the single instance of each special table.
NOTE ►► The Data Groups and Validation Groups tables do not
appear anywhere in MDM Console.
MDM Console
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Part 1: Basic Concepts
• System tables. System tables appear under the Admin node in the
Console Hierarchy and include Roles, Users, Connections, Change
Tracking, Remote Systems, Ports, Links, XML Schemas, and
Reports, and Logs.
NOTE ►► When you first create a new MDM repository, MDM
automatically creates the single instance of each system table.
NOTE ►► The Logs table is MDM Server-specific rather than MDM
repository-specific, and appears in the Console Hierarchy under an
MDM Server node after all of the MDM repository nodes.
