Information Catalog Manager Programming Guide and Reference

Organizing objects using categories

The Information Catalog Manager provides seven categories for classifying your metadata. These categories control how objects work together to provide a structure for the metadata in your information catalog database. Except for the Program and Attachment categories, you can create new object types in any of the following information catalog categories:

Category

Definition

Grouping

Object types that can contain other object types.

Elemental

Non-Grouping object types that are the building blocks for other Information Catalog Manager object types.

Contact

Object types that identify a reference for more information about an object. More information might include the person who created the information that the object represents, or the department responsible for maintaining the information.

Program

A Programs object type that identifies and describes applications capable of processing the actual information represented by the Information Catalog Manager object types. The only object type belonging to the Program category is the Programs object type, which is defined when you create an information catalog.

Dictionary

Object types that define terminology that is specific to your business.

Support

Object types that provide additional information about your information catalog or enterprise.

Attachment

A Comments object type that identifies additional information attached to another Information Catalog Manager object. The only object type belonging to the Attachment category is the Comments object type, which is defined when you create an information catalog.

Table 1 summarizes the relationships among the Information Catalog Manager's object type categories.

Table 1. The Information Catalog Manager category relationships

Category	Can contain/ contained by	Links with	Contacts associated	Comments attached	Programs launch from
Grouping	Contains other Grouping or Elemental objects.	Other Grouping or Elemental objects	Yes	Yes	Yes
Elemental	Contained by any Grouping object.	Other Grouping or Elemental objects	Yes	Yes	Yes
Contact	None	None	No	Yes	Yes
Program	None	None	No	Yes	No
Dictionary	None	None	No	Yes	Yes
Support	None	None	No	Yes	Yes
Attachment	None	None	No	No	Yes

The Information Catalog Manager lets you organize data about your information sources by defining object types and objects.

You use object types to classify your objects. For example, if you have several database tables, you can create an object type for tables so that you can store and maintain similar metadata for each table. For most categories, you can define your object types to contain whatever metadata is most useful for your organization.

Objects contain the metadata for a specific unit of information; for example, information about a table, a person, or a program. An object type is a template for an object; it defines the metadata that you need to store in the information catalog for each similar unit of information. Therefore, consider objects as instances of the object type; you can define several instances based on a single object type.

For more information about using different categories to design your information catalog, see the Information Catalog Manager Administration Guide.