IM Relationship Resolution Information Center, Version 4.2

Glossary

This glossary contains definitions for the Relationship Resolution terminology.

A

account
See identity.
acquisition file processor (AFP)
See UMF file conversion utility.
acquisition programs
The tools and programs that acquire data, convert it to a recognized format (if necessary), and submit it to the pipeline for processing. These programs can be configured to run in batch mode or in real-time mode.
address hygiene
The process that normalizes and standardizes address information to correct possible errors and transpositions and to enable optimal matching and linking between entities. Additional address correction software can be used to enhance the address hygiene process.
AFP (acquisition file processor)
See UMF file conversion utility.
alert
A message or other indication that signals an event has occurred. See also role alert and attribute alert.
application monitor
The component that monitors pipeline errors, status, and statistics and that sends routing information to pipelines. The application monitor is installed with the pipeline, however it can be installed separately as well.
application monitor database
The database that stores the routing and monitoring information for the pipelines. See also entity database and Configuration Console database.
attribute
A characteristic or trait that describes a person, organization, place, or item. See also entity and identity.
attribute alert
An alert that identifies entities that match a specified set of attributes.
attribute alert generator
A set of attributes, which the customer defines, that the pipeline uses to compare with the incoming attributes of identities. If the attributes match, the pipeline generates an attribute alert.
attribute type
A specific classification of an attribute. The supported attribute types are characteristics, numbers, names, addresses, and e-mail addresses. See also attribute.

C

candidate builder
The configured set of attributes that are used to build the candidate list. See also candidate list and attributes.
candidate list
The list of entities that have the potential to match the incoming identity. The candidate list is built by retrieving those entities that share certain attributes (such as numbers and addresses) with the incoming identity, based on the attributes that are specified in the candidate builder. During the re-resolve process, the list of entities are matched to the new composite entity.
candidate threshold
The minimum score at which a particular attribute value must match between the incoming identity and an existing entity to satisfy the resolution rule. See also resolution rule.
characteristic
A user-defined trait or property that is associated with an identity that is not commonly expressed as a name, number, address, or e-mail. This attribute allows users to extend the product by defining customizable entity attributes that are meaningful to their data sources. See also attribute and identity.
cleansed pipeline search (CPS)
Synonym for search.
CME Admin (Central Messaging Engine Administrator)
See application monitor.
CME Admin node
See Configuration Console.
Configuration Console
The graphical user interface that you use to configure the system, monitor data and route messages, and view reports.
Configuration Console database
The database that stores the configuration settings for the Configuration Console. See also application monitor database and entity database.
configuration utility
A utility that is used after installation to modify configuration settings for database configuration and WebSphere Application Server logging. It can also be used to apply fixes to the Configuration Console and the Visualizer.
conflict
See role alert.
conflict rules
See role alert rules.

D

daemon
A program that runs unattended to perform continuous or periodic functions, such as network control.
data mapping
A defined mapping between the data in a UMF file and the corresponding tables and table columns in the entity database. A data mapping must exist to successfully load data into the entity database.
data quality management (DQM)
The pipeline process that checks the data for required values, valid data types, and valid codes, and also corrects the data by providing default values, formatting numbers and dates, and adding new codes, if that has been configured. Data quality management includes address hygiene and name standardization processing. See also address hygiene and name standardization.
data source
The data that contains the identities that you want to load into the entity database. Data sources contain identifying data (unique, personal identifiers for an identity) and non-identifying data (other attributes and data points for an identity). The identity records in the data source must be exported as Universal Message Format (UMF) before they can be loaded into the entity database. Examples of data sources include, but are not limited to, employee databases, watch lists, vendor lists, customer lists, and so on.
data source account
When referring to the specific instance in a data source, see identity.
When referring to the unique ID for a specific instance in a data source, see external ID.
data source code
The user-defined identifier for the data source.
data source record
See identity.
data source reference
See external reference.
degrees of separation
A measurement of the relationship between two entities. The measurement is a positive integer greater than or equal to zero that defines the minimum number of entities involved in a chain of relationships not including the root entity. For example, if two entities are related, those entities are 1 degree separated, and have a 1-degree relationship. See also relationship.
detach
The process of de-coupling an inbound identity from an entity and verifying again that it should still be associated with that entity.
disclosure
A user-defined relationship between two identities in two separate entities.
document types
See UMF input documents.
DQM
See data quality management.
DQM rule
A rule that defines how data is processed by the data quality management (DQM) processes and DQM functions. DQM rules apply to specific UMF segments. When you define a DQM rule, you define the DQM function, the specific parameters, and the order in which the rule is processed. See also data quality management and UMF segment.

E

element
(1) See attribute and attribute type.
(2) In markup languages such as SGML, XML, and HTML, a basic unit consisting of a start tag, end tag, associated attributes and their values, and any text that is contained between the two.
entity
A collection of one or more identities that represent the same person, organization, place, or item. See also identity.
entity database
The database that stores identities, entities, and data that is used for relationships, resolutions, and alerts. The entity database might also store configuration, routing, and monitoring settings, if users did not choose to create a separate application monitor database and Configuration Console database. See also application monitor database and Configuration Console database.
entity model
The set of user-defined attributes that define an entity in the system. See also attributes and entity.
entity resolution
The process that compares one or more identities and determines if they represent the same entity or two different entities. If two identities are determined to represent the same person, organization, place, or item, they are resolved into a single entity; otherwise, they are unresolved into two separate entities.
event
An event represents information about something that happened in the business domain, such as "a customer opens an account" or "a customer wires money". In IBM Relationship Resolution Event Manager, events contain attributes, which are based on their corresponding event types.
event alert
An event alert occurs when a collection of complex events meets specified criteria over a specified life span. Event alerts are based on business rules that are defined in a complex event processor, and can indicate situations of interest, such as two or more purchase transactions of more than 10,000 U.S. dollars occurred in the last hour at locations 240 kilometers from each other.
event type
An event type categorizes events and defines the unit of measure for the value associated with events in IBM Relationship Resolution Event Manager. Examples of event types include wire transfer, account opening, or credit card transaction.
Event types are required for event processing, because the user-defined business rules that the event processor uses call a specific event type. If the event type does not exist, the event processor cannot process the event.
external ID
A unique key that identifies an identity in the data source. An external ID typically consists of a unique ID for the data source and a unique ID for the identity within its original data source. For example, an external ID for an identity in the customer records for a bank might contain the bank name (for the data source) and the account number (for the identity in the data source), such as FirstCapital, 0123456789.
external reference
An additional identifier for an identity in a data source. For example, an employee data source might use the employee serial number as the external ID and the employee's social security number as the external reference. Often, however, the external reference is set to the same value as the external ID, because the additional identifier is not necessary to uniquely identify an identity.

F

full attribution
An auditing feature of the entity database whereby specific details are stored on where the identities come from. By accumulating this context, all data in the entity database can be traced back to the original source system.

G

GDA (general data acquisition)
See UMF database conversion utility.
general data acquisition (GDA)
See UMF database conversion utility.
generic value
A data value that has occurred in the database for multiple entities a specific number of times. For example, a telephone number with a value of 555-555-5555 might be considered a generic value after it occurs in the database 10 times. See also generic threshold.
generic threshold
The number of times that a data value can occur in the database for multiple entities before that data value is considered a generic value. See also generic value.

H

hash
An alphanumeric string that is generated from another value in order to aid in the searching and comparing of values within the entity database.

I

identity
A collection of attributes from a data source that represent a person, organization, place, or item.
identity resolution
See entity resolution.

L

likeness score
See resolution score.

M

match merge rule
See resolution rule.

N

name standardization
The process that normalizes names by reducing them to the most common derivative or root name. For example, Richard is the most common derivative or root name for Dick, Ricardo, Ricky, Rich, or Ritchie and Mohammad is the most common derivative or root name for Mohamad, Mohamed, Mohammad, or Mohammed.
NCE (net change engine)
See net change utility.
net change engine (NCE)
See net change utility.
net change utility
A utility that compares fixed-width text file to a known data set and either eliminates duplicate records between the incoming data and the known data set or marks the records as add, change, or delete. This utility can significantly reduce the number of records that are submitted to the pipelines for processing.
node
In a network configuration, the physical machine that contains one or more related functional units.

O

output messages
See UMF output documents.

P

persistent search
See attribute alert generator.
pipeline
The component that performs name standardization, data quality management, address hygiene, and entity resolution. The pipeline also generates alerts, based on the system configurations. See also name standardization, data quality management, address hygiene, and entity resolution.
pipeline node
The physical machine that contains one or more running pipeline processes. See also pipeline.
primary matching
See candidate builder.

Q

queue utility
A utility that manages the transfer of data from a process or a file to a queue in a queue manager, such as Microsoft Message Queuing or WebSphere MQ.
Qutil
See queue utility.

R

record
The storage representation of a single row of a table or other data.
relationship
A link between two or more entities. A relationship is created based on discovered data, disclosed data, or both. See also entity.
relationship resolution
See entity resolution.
relationship score
The value that is assigned during entity resolution as a result of applying the resolution rules and that defines how closely the two compared identities are related to each other. This score is fixed; that is, it is not adjusted after the entity resolution process is completed. See also resolution score.
resolution rule
The set of criteria that define how compared entities are resolved or related.
resolution score
The value that is assigned during entity resolution as a result of the confirmation and denial processing and that defines the likelihood that the compared identities represent the same entity. This score is used to resolve a new identity to an existing entity. See also relationship score.
re-resolve
The process of re-evaluating entities against existing entities, relationships, or resolutions, and then resolving those entities appropriately.
role
A classification of an identity that defines the focus or purpose for that identity. You can associate one or more roles with an identity.
role alert
An alert that identifies a single entity or two entities that contain roles that the user has defined as of interest or as conflicting.
role alert rules
A user-configured rule that identifies one or more roles that cannot exist in a single entity or cannot be linked between multiple entities.
role code
The unique identifier for a role. See also role.
rule
A set of conditional statements that enable computer systems to identify relationships and run automated responses accordingly.

S

service
A program that performs a primary function within a server or related software.
SOAP
A lightweight, XML-based protocol for exchanging information in a decentralized, distributed environment. SOAP can be used to query and return information and invoke services across the Internet. See also Web services.

T

transliteration
The process of changing characters that are represented in one alphabet into the characters of another alphabet.
transport
A communication layer that allows the product to send and receive data between the user data source and a pipeline. Examples of transports include the HTTP transport, the queue transport, the database transport, or the file transport, among others.

U

UDDI
See Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration.
UMF (Universal Message Format)
A standard markup language, based on XML, for structuring data source files. To load data into the entity database, it must be in a universal message format (UMF) file.
UMF document
The collection of UMF segments that structure the data.
UMF elements
XML tags and values that define the data within a UMF segment of a UMF document.
UMF record segment
See UMF segment.
UMF input document
The collection of UMF segments that structure the incoming data to load, modify, or query data in the entity database.
UMF output document
The collection of UMF segments that structure result data.
UMF database conversion utility
A utility that converts database files to Universal Message Format (UMF) files. This utility is often customized for your specific database environment. See also Universal Message Format.
UMF file
A file that contains one or more UMF documents. See also UMF document.
UMF file conversion utility
A utility that converts fixed-width text files to Universal Message Format (UMF) files. See also Universal Message Format.
UMF formatting utility
A utility that formats Universal Message Format (UMF) files and extracts UMF data to view the UMF records in wide format (one UMF record per line), tall format (one UMF record across many lines), or for a specific UMF tag. See also Universal Message Format.
UMF message
See UMF document.
UMF segment
The part of a UMF document that structures the data for the data source.
Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)
A set of standards-based specifications that enables companies and applications to quickly and easily find and use Web services over the Internet. See also Web services.
unresolve
The process of separating resolved identities into two separate entities.

V

Visualizer
The graphical user interface that analysts use to research alerts, view relationships, search for entities, load data, and run reports.

W

Web service
A self-contained, self-describing modular application that can be published, discovered, and invoked over a network using standard network protocols. Typically, XML is used to tag the data, SOAP is used to transfer the data, WSDL is used for describing the services available, and UDDI is used for listing what services are available. See also SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL.
WSDL (Web Services Description Language)
An XML-based specification for describing networked services as a set of endpoints operating on messages containing either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information. See also Web services.

X

Xutil
See UMF formatting utility.


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Last updated: 2009