Built into IBM® Relationship Resolution pipelines is a dynamic search
and query interface, that provides a single-point-of-access for Web services
to query the entity database. You use UMF input documents to structure the
request, and then send the UMF input document through Web services to the
pipelines for processing. Once processed, the pipeline returns a UMF output
document that contains the results.
Web services pipeline searches provide answers to two types of
questions:
- Which entities in the entity database match to a particular attribute
or set of attributes? (UMF_SEARCH)
- This type of Web services pipeline search takes full advantage of entity
resolution to recognize and standardize the incoming search criteria, and
then to match the search criteria to entities in the database. It is called
a summary or result set query, and it returns a list of entities with data
values that match to the requested attribute value or list of attribute values.
- To perform a summary or result set query, you create a UMF_SEARCH input
document that contains the search criteria that the pipeline uses to perform
entity resolution. The pipeline responds by returning a UMF_SEARCH_RESULT
output document with the query results, which are the list of entities that
matched the search criteria.
- What does the entity database know about a specific entity? (UMF_QUERY)
- This type of Web services pipeline search uses SQL statements and parameters
to query the entity database. It is called a detail or drill-down query, and
it returns a detailed list of the information about a single entity.
- To perform a detail or drill-down query, you create a UMF_QUERY input
document that indicates which entity in the entity database you want information
about. The pipeline responds by returning a UMF_QUERY_RESULT output document
with the detail about the requested entity.
While performing Web service pipeline searches, the pipelines
perform all standard pipeline functions, including logging.
Both the
input (request) and the output (response) for Web services pipeline searches
use UMF documents and structure the information in UMF.
Web service pipeline search formats
IBM Relationship
Resolution comes with several built-in formats for each of the Web services
pipeline searches:
- UMF_SEARCH formats
- WS_SUMMARY_TOP10
- Returns a list of the top 10 entities in the database that most closely
matched the attribute data specified in the search criteria
- WS_SUMMARY_TOP100
- Returns a list of the top 100 entities in the database that most closely
matched the attribute data specified in the search criteria
- WS_SUMMARY
- Returns a list of all entities in the database that matched the attribute
data specified in the search criteria
- UMF_QUERY formats
- WS_DETAIL
- Returns all data from entity database for the requested entity ID
- WS_RELATION
- Returns a list of all entities in the entity database that are related
to the input entity at 1-degree
- WS_ALERT
- Returns a list of all alerts in the entity database that involve the input
entity ID
You indicate which built-in format to use in the FORMAT_CODE
tag in the appropriate UMF input document.
Performance considerations
Web services pipeline
search requests that contain more search criteria typically mean the system
compares against fewer entities in the database. That, in turn, means that
the system returns results quicker than requests with fewer search criteria.