Other terms or concepts that are related to, or similar to, the subject area include: business object, and hierarchical entity. Informatica Data Director uses the subject area definition to determine how to treat each foreign key relationship in an Operational Reference Store (ORS).

The Hub Store maintains detailed metadata about tables and relationships defined in an ORS. This metadata includes relationships between base object tables that can represent:

The Hub Store provides some of the metadata that allows Informatica Data Director to understand how relationships should be treated. For example, the base object lookup indicator tells Informatica Data Director when to treat a related table as a lookup with a

pre-populated

dropdown list that users see in an Informatica Data Director application.

For other relationships, an Informatica Data Director application might require additional information to correctly understand the relationships - whether they should be interpreted as relationships among tables in a subject area, or relationships between subject areas. The Informatica Data Director Configuration Manager is used to specify this additional relationship information for Informatica Data Director applications. You cannot use aliases for a subject area that is based on a Hierarchy Manager relationship.

A subject area represents a collection of data that should be treated as a unit from a business perspective. A subject area has: