(GLUE-1905) Additional Features of a Glue table

You may enable multiple additional features of a Glue table during its creation. These features with their description are listed below.

After you have selected your preferred additional features, complete the creation of a Glue table, as described in the chapter (GLUE-1905) Create a Glue Table.

Enable update

The functionality simulates the update operation for tables on storages, such as Apache Hive and Apache Impala, which don't support the update operation. Enable update automatically creates an update table, which is a copy of the original Glue table without the GLREQUEST field. During an extraction the update table stores updated data, which is transferred from the original Glue table.

To enable update

1. Select Enable update on the Attributes tab.
   
2. Then, choose if you either want to

   • Keep old data. During an extraction the original Glue table stores the original values and the update table stores all the updated values.
     Mark Keep old data.

   • Keep only updated data. During an extraction only the updated values are stored in the update table. The original Glue table is empty. 
     Clear Keep old data.
     
3. Fill in the name of the Update table, which is automatically created.
   

Meaningful values  

Data inserted into the storage doesn't always include values which can be easily understood. The values are often represented by their simplified or shortened versions.

To display the more explicit versions of the values

Mark the checkbox Use meaningful values in the Attributes tab.

Example:

Table: SFLIGHT: field CARRID (Airline Code):

As a result, instead of the shortened values such as AA, AB, AC, etc., the descriptive terms such as the American Airlines, Air Berlin, and Air Canada are displayed in a Glue table.

Data Enrichment

Data enrichment (or denormalization) includes data from SAP master data into transactional data.

To enable data enrichment

Mark the Data enrichment in the Attributes tab during the creation of the Glue table.

Example: Data enrichment inserts the master data - here airline code (CARRID) into the transactional data - here flight number (CARRID_ENRICHED).

With disabled Data enrichment:

With enabled Data enrichment:

Meaningful fields

SAP table fields tend to have field names that are not self-explanatory. An unskilled SAP-user doesn't understand the meaning of these fields. The Meaningful fields feature alters those field names so they are easily understandable.

To use the meaningful fields in a table

in the Fields tab, mark the Use meaningful fields checkbox or click the toolbar button Translate to meaningful field names.

Example:

Here is a comparison of 2 tables, both created from SAP SFLIGHT table. The first table was created with original field names, the second using meaningful field names.