A hierarchy consists of a root business entity node and hierarchy relationships that define parent-child relationships between business entities. When you create a hierarchy, you must specify a business entity as the root node. Then you add a business entity to the hierarchy and configure a hierarchy relationship from the root business entity to the business entity.
You can add additional business entities and configure hierarchy relationships between the business entities. Each hierarchy relationship in a hierarchy must have a direct or indirect relationship to the root business entity. You can create as many hierarchy relationships as you need to represent the hierarchy model.
For example, your organization needs to track customers by households. You might create the following hierarchy and hierarchy relationships:
Create an Organization hierarchy.
Add the Organization business entity as the root business entity.
Create a relationship from the Organization business entity to the Household business entity.
Create a relationship from the Household business entity to the Person business entity.
Then in
Data Director
, users can create a hierarchy relationship from the Informatica record to the Smith record. Create a relationship from the Smith record to the John Smith record, and then create a relationship from the Smith record to the Jane Smith record.
The following image shows a sample hierarchy in the Hierarchy Designer: