You can change the output of a model by editing the intelligent structure nodes. The available options depend on the type of sample input that you base the model on and on the output data type of the node.
You perform actions on nodes on the Visual Model tab.
Perform the following actions to edit the nodes:
Change the root node.
To change the root, right-click the new root node and select Mark As Root. Changes to root nodes don't affect the XML, JSON, or Relational outputs of the Structure Parser transformation.
Rename a node.
To rename a node, right-click a node, select Rename, and then enter the name, for example Street Address. Node names are not case sensitive. Names must be unique across sibling nodes, that is, nodes that reside under the same node.
Apply unique names to nodes
To apply unique naming across the structure, right-click the root node and select Apply Unique Naming. When you apply unique naming to a model, if the data in the sample input contains fields with identical names in different groups,Intelligent Structure Discovery uses suffixes to rename identical names to unique names.
Restore original node names.
You can restore the original node names and remove the suffixes that Intelligent Structure Discovery adds to identical names in different hierarchy levels.
To restore the original node names in a structure, right-click the root node of the structure and select Restore Original Names.
Note: Don't restore original node names for models that you plan to use in a Data Integration mapping with a relational output. Under these conditions, node names must be unique across the structure.
Combine data in two nodes.
To join two nodes, click and drag a node to the other node. For example, in the following model, the time node is selected and dragged to the date node:
The following image shows the combined node:
Combine all child node data into a parent node.
To flatten a parent node and merge its child nodes, right-click the node and select Flatten. When you flatten a node, the data from the child nodes is merged into one output field for the parent node. The child nodes are no longer separate fields in the output.
Exclude a node from the structure.
To exclude a node from the structure, right-click the node and select Exclude from Structure. When you exclude a node from the structure, the data from the node is not part of the output of the model and is not parsed during run time.
Include a node in the structure.
You can re-include excluded nodes in the structure and include nodes that Intelligent Structure Discovery doesn't include in the structure by default. For example, you can include the name of an Excel spreadsheet in the structure. To include a node in the structure, right-click the node and select Include in Structure.
Determine how Intelligent Structure Discovery parses data from Microsoft Excel files.
You can determine whether Intelligent Structure Discovery parses the formatted data that Microsoft Excel shows or the underlying, unformatted data when it parses fields in a Microsoft Excel file.
To determine how Intelligent Structure Discovery parses the data, right-click the node and select either of the following options:
- Extract Formatted Data. Intelligent Structure Discovery parses the fields as formatted data.
- Extract Unformatted Data. Intelligent Structure Discovery parses the fields as unformatted data.
Split a node.
You can split nodes in a structure that is based on fixed-width files. To split the data in a node into two nodes, for example, for a credit card number for which you only want to store the last four digits, perform the following steps:
1Right-click the node and select Split. The Split dialog box appears.
2In the Split dialog box, highlight the data in the display field to indicate where to split the data. The data is split and displayed as two fields, with one field containing the highlighted data, and the second field containing the non-highlighted data.
3To confirm the split, click OK.
4To undo the split, click Reset.
For example, you want to split a node with year-month-date-hour-minute data in one field into two fields. You want to create a year-month-date field and an hour-minute field. The following image shows the highlighted section that you want to split:
Treat JSON model as repeating
By default, when the sample JSON model does not contain repetitions, the Structure Parser transformation does not parse repeating groups. If you want to parse repeating groups, right-click the JSON root node and select Treat as Recurring.
Treat an element as repeating
By default, when an element in the sample JSON or XML model does not contain repetitions, the Structure Parser transformation does not parse repetitions of the element. If you want to parse repetitions of the element, right-click the node and select Treat as a List. To undo a Treat as a List action, right-click the node and select Treat as Single.
