Use datasource to enrich objects

 There are a couple of reasons to use a datasource in BlueDolphin:

• Create Objects
• Enrich Objects
• Relationships

This article will describe how to enrich an object using a datasource.

First, follow the article Import data into BlueDolphin to make your local datasource available in BlueDolphin.

In this article I will explain the steps you need to take to enrich objects in the "Application components" definition based on a loaded datasource, in my case "Source_Applications2".

Before executing the steps, make sure you:

• have a valid BlueDolphin environment
• are Administrator in the environment
• have objects in the required Object definition you would like to enrich

Go to the Object definitions section of the Admin module and select the definition for which you want to enrich the objects.

For the correct usage of the enrichment process, we need to have a unique identifier which is present in all datasources. In the article Use datasource to create objects, we created objects from a datasource. In this datasource, a unique key is present and we need to make sure that the same unique key is also present in the datasource that we are going to use for enriching the objects.

So, firstly we need to add an object property and include this in the source setting we used to create the objects.

Go to the General tab and click Add object property and create a new object property. I have created the property "UniqueId" (see the screenshot below).

No further configuration has to be done on the property. It will be used as a placeholder for the unique value from the datasource. The datasource used for enrichment will be using this property to look up the correct object.

We now need to make sure that the datasource which creates the objects also fills the "UniqueId" property. Go to the Sources tab.

Click on Source Applications to open the source configuration which creates the objects. Then click Add field connection and in the newly added line select the "UniqueId" property and assign the unique field from the datasource. See the image below for my settings.

Now that we have updated the configuration which adds objects, we can add a new configuration which enriches the objects.

Just to give you an idea of the contents of my datasource, the screenshot below contains some basic license information.

The source contains the same "ID" field as the source used for object creation. The "ID" field is also used to fill the "UniqueId" property.

In BlueDolphin, open the source tab of the object definition and click Add source connection. See the image below for my settings.

The most important settings are:

• I leave New objects are allowed to be created with data from the source unchecked. I don't want to create new objects with data from this source, I want to enrich existing objects.
• I set the "=" to the UnitId field. This causes BlueDolphin to use the "ID" field in my source and use its value to look for a corresponding value in the UniqueId object property. When an Object with the same value in "UniqueId" property is found, the datasource is bound to that object.
• The title field I have just set as a "dummy" value. It will never be used because we don't create objects with this datasource.

When all configurations are complete, save the object definition. For the enrichment process to be started, click the refresh icon. See the image below.

To show the results of above actions, go to Objects and open the Application component "7Zip".

Select the Sources tab.

Here you see there is a source processing object "7Zip" with 2 datasources bound to it - "Source_Applications" and "Source_Applications2". You can select each datasource to see its contents. When selecting "Source_Applications2", you can see that the ID field value is equal.

You can repeat this step multiple times to connect all your available datasources to BlueDolphin objects. You can use various datasources in questionnaire fields (shown in Use datasource to create objects) or in reports.