Transient entities and transient entity events

Transient entities and associated transient entity-level events can be created during normal processing of member operations.

A transient entity occurs when a member operation is being processed and that member is immediately involved in an entity operation. For example, when a member is created (memput interaction) in the MDM database and then that member immediately links into a new entity, the entity is considered transient. An entity can also be considered transient when a member unlinks from an entity and immediately links to a new entity, when a member is unmerged and immediately links to a new entity, or when a member is undeleted and immediately links to a new entity. The transient designation remains only during the time in which the initial member operation and entity operation occur.

A transient event is an event that is being processed by the Event Manager, but becomes obsolete during processing because of another MDM operation. Transient events do not need to be published to downstream systems because the event information is no longer valid.

When operations cause a transient entity, a transient entity event is also created. The following scenario describes one way in which a transient entity and a transient event can be created.
  1. Member A is created and placed into a transient entity (Entity 8). This operation creates two events: member create and entity create.
  2. The events are placed into the event notification queue.
  3. While the events are waiting to be processed by the Event Manager, entity management processing occurs in the MDM operational server and immediately places Member A into a new and final entity (Entity 10). This operation makes the transient entity (Entity 8) invalid.
  4. Now there are three events that are queued for delivery to the downstream system. If the final entity that Member A joined was an existing entity, the events that are queued are one member create, one entity create, and one entity update. If the final entity was a new entity, then there is one member create and two entity create events. In either case, the original entity create event (for Entity 8) is no longer valid because the transient entity no longer exists in the MDM database.

Asynchronous queue management and system performance can also influence when an event is considered transient or when it is not. For example, the Entity Manager might be processing a few hours behind a bulk load process that uses the memput interaction. The Event Manager is notified of a member create and an entity create immediately after the memput completes. If the Event Manager is keeping up with its work load, then the events might be processed before the Entity Manager is able to link the member into a new entity. In this case, the entity is not considered transient because the event is processed before the member is moved to the new entity. If the member does eventually link into a new entity after entity management runs, both of the entity create events are valid and are relevant to the downstream system.

The MDM Event Manager can, regardless of the grouped message property setting, determine when an event is considered transient and does not send such an event to downstream systems.


Last updated: 23 October 2014