Understanding specs and the MDM metadata project

The InfoSphere® MDM Workbench provides a project type, called the MDM metadata project, to represent a metadata package. After a metadata project is created, different types of metadata (such as specs) can be created within it. A metadata package represents a collection of metadata content of varying types. When you finish creating the metadata, the enclosing metadata package can be deployed to the InfoSphere MDM runtime using the InfoSphere MDM Workbench. Alternatively, you can also deploy the metadata package using the MDMENV command line deployment tool.

An optional set of locales is also associated with a metadata project. If these locales are provided to be used with the project, they are stored in the mdm.locales file, in the locales directory, in the project root. They provide a representation of the locales supported by the target deployment system and are defined as <localemap:locale> elements, specified by the InfoSphere MDM locale schema. For example:

<localemap:locale>
  <localemap:name>en</localemap:name>
  <localemap:description>English</localemap:description>
</localemap:locale>

A metadata project can reference other metadata projects to adopt their locale configuration. This process is cumulative, and the locale configuration is inherited though a project reference hierarchy. Project references are stored within the project file, in the project root. The references are defined as project elements as follows:

<projectDescription>
  ...
  <projects>
    <project>project1</project>
    <project>project2</project>
      ...
    <project>projectN</project>
    <project>root</project>
  </projects>
  ...
</projectDescription>

The project is a standard Eclipse file created by the InfoSphere MDM Workbench from information supplied when a new project is created. It contains additional information about the project, such as its name.

Using MDM specs in the metadata project

After you create a metadata project in the InfoSphere MDM Workbench, you can create a spec in the project to begin working on it. As described in Understanding the spec format, the core of a spec contains three schemas: internal, external, and localized. When a spec is first created using the InfoSphere MDM Workbench, only the internal schema is created. This schema is to hold the dynamic data model that you want to create. Therefore this schema must be set up correctly by you to meet your business requirements.

After you finish creating the internal schema, you can use the InfoSphere MDM Workbench to generate the external schema and the localized schema. In addition it generates a nlsTemplate.properties file that can be used as the template of a translation properties file.