PowerExchange for PeopleSoft supports trees with loosely enforced levels. In a loose-level tree, one level can contain nodes with different kinds of information. Also, nodes representing the same type of information can appear at multiple levels. Loose-level trees do not have strict hierarchical structures.

Loose-level trees can contain branches with skipped or missing nodes. Skipped or missing nodes result in different sets of data but do not affect the structure of the tree or the imported source definition.

The following figure shows a loose-level winter tree with no missing nodes:

Level one contains CEO information. Level two contains information about vice presidents. Level three contains information about managers. However, in this example, one node in level two refers to a data column that contains information about directors, not information about vice presidents.

The tree is a loose-level tree because the nodes in level two contain different kinds of information. The PowerCenter Integration Service denormalizes loose-level trees using vertical flattening only.