The discovery process detects structural information related to entities in database systems and file systems. This includes:
- Entities
- Attributes
- Relationships
- Indexes
- Comments
It determines which entities (or tables) are present, together with their attributes (or columns) and associated constraints and indexes.
For columns, the following information is discovered:
- name
- data type
- default value
- if it is a primary key
- if it is an auto increment column (for example an identity)
- if it contains unique values
- whether or not it is allowed to contain null values
WhereScape 3D contains the following three discovery processes:
- Generic discovery - These cannot be viewed or edited. Refer to Generic Discovery for details.
- WhereScape defined - These can be viewed using the Discovery method manager tool. Refer to WhereScape Defined Discovery for details.
- User defined - These can be viewed and edited using the Discovery method manager tool. Refer to User Defined Discovery for details.
A number of options can be specified when running the discovery process.
Note
One current limitation for file system discovery is that all files being discovered must be in the same format. For example, if the files are delimited, they must all use the same delimiter.