Importing and exporting glossary assets of the catalog

You can import and export glossary assets to and from external files. By using external files, you can edit glossary assets, transfer glossary assets from one catalog to another, and transfer glossary assets to different IBM® InfoSphere® Information Server installations.

Each import and export method and file format has different capabilities that you need to consider before you decide which method to use.

You can use the import and export capabilities to do the following actions:
  • Import glossary assets into a new catalog.
  • Import some glossary assets to add to the existing catalog. For example, you might add some new subcategories with their contained terms. Or, you might add new information governance policies and their referenced information governance rules.
  • Update the catalog with ongoing updates from a third party system. If the catalog is updated periodically in this way while regularly being manually updated by an administrator, you must put procedures in place to ensure that changes from one source do not incorrectly overwrite changes from the other source.
  • Perform large-scale glossary asset update or maintenance. You might export some glossary assets, edit the resulting file, and then import this modified file to update the catalog.
  • Create an archive of glossary assets to be deployed on another instance of IBM InfoSphere Information Server.

If the workflow feature is enabled during the export process, you can choose to export glossary assets from the development glossary or from the catalog. If workflow is enabled when you import a glossary file that you have modified offline, then, in general, changes to glossary assets are put into the development glossary in draft state. If the file is an XML file, the merge option that you select determines what assets are actually changed, and any assets that overwrite existing assets on the server are put into draft state. If the file is a CSV file, changes to any asset result in that asset being put in draft state.

If workflow is not enabled when you import a file that was originally exported from the development glossary, the content in the file is written to the catalog. For XML files, the selected merge options apply. For CSV files, changes in the file overwrite existing glossary assets in the catalog.

Importing large glossary files, such as the XML files of IBM Industry Models, might fail due to exceeding the timeout values set in IBM WebSphere® Application Server and InfoSphere Information Server. You can change these values so that the import succeeds.

Information Governance Catalog Glossary Administrators can use several methods to import and export glossary assets.

You can perform the import or export task from IBM InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog or from a command line. To use a command line, you use the InfoSphere Information Server command-line interface (istool).

Note: In addition to glossary assets, you can import and export information assets such as extension mapping documents and extended data sources. Import of information assets is done either by the InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog user interface or by the istool command line utility. For details, see the related links below.