Working with hierarchies

The hierarchy feature for asset views enables you to display a set of assets in a table as a hierarchy, or tree structure, based on the relations between the assets. You can select which relation types to display in the hierarchy.

A hierarchy is a visual representation of relations between assets, resulting in a tree-like path.

Note Collibra Data Intelligence Cloud uses dotted lines to graphically depict the relations between the assets in the hierarchy. Small carets (triangles) depict nodes in the hierarchy that you can expand.

When you enable hierarchies, you can choose between:

  • A single-path hierarchy: for each node at a certain level in the hierarchy, there is only one path to nodes at the next level.
  • A multi-path hierarchy: a hierarchy in which all relations are traversed for any asset, at any depth.
Note 
  • In a hierarchy, filters are only applied at the root level.
  • You cannot export or import a hierarchy.
  • You cannot use tile display mode in a hierarchy.

Single-path hierarchy

Imagine you have assets that represent Reports. Each report asset contains Report Attribute assets.

You can depict this as a single-path hierarchy, using a single relation type:

  • [Report] contains [Report Attribute]

In the resulting hierarchy, the maximum depth (meaning the number of relations between a root node and a leaf node) is one.

Now imagine some of those Report Attributes are represented by Business Assets, via the relation type:

  • [Data Asset] represented by [Business Asset]

Note Keep in mind that Report Attribute is a child asset type of Data Asset.

You can depict this with a single-path hierarchy, consisting of two relation types:

  • [Report] contains [Report Attribute]
  • [Data Asset] represented by [Business Asset]

The maximum depth of this hierarchy will be two.

Now imagine that your Reports are grouped into other Reports, and you want to depict this as a hierarchy, as well. You can depict this as a single-path hierarchy, using a single relation type:

  • [Report] groups [Report]

The fundamental difference between this hierarchy and the previous one is that the target asset type of the relation (Report) is the same as the source asset type (Report), which can result in a hierarchy of unlimited depth. For example:

  • Report A groups Reports B and C
  • Report B groups Reports D and E
  • Report C groups Reports F

This hierarchy shows the Groups relations between the Reports, but it does not show the Report Attributes contained in each Report. Single-path hierarchy does not allow for these two relation types to be simultaneously depicted in a hierarchy:

  • [Report] groups [Report]
  • [Report] contains [Report Attribute]

In a single-path hierarchy, each Report node acts like a junction, at which you can view the instances of one relation type or the other, but not both.

Multi-path hierarchy

This is where multi-path hierarchy comes into play: at each junction, any relation type in the hierarchy path is traversed to find more nodes. For example, you can simultaneously view:

  • [Report] groups [Report]
  • [Report] contains [Report Attribute]
  • [Data Asset] represented by [Business Asset]