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Quick Review of Reltio Information Architecture

You need to understand the information architecture to ensure that you can design based on your requirement.

The following concepts regarding the Reltio Information architecture are relevant for the design of match rules and the approach you will use for matching. So let’s review them quickly here.

  • Entities and relationships each have configurable attribution capability
  • Values found in an attribute are associated with a crosswalk held within an entity or relationship object. Each profile can have multiple crosswalks, each contributing one or more values.
  • Profiles can be matched and merged, but relationships are also matched and merged. While you will develop match rules to govern the matching and merging of profiles, merging of relationships is automatic and intrinsic to the platform. Any two relationships of the same type, that each have entity A at one endpoint and entity B at their other endpoint, will merge automatically.
  • An attribute is intrinsically multi-valued, meaning it can hold multiple values. This means any attribute can collect and store multiple values from contributing sources or through merging of additional crosswalks. Thus, if a match rule utilizes the first name attribute, then the match engine will by default, compare all values held within the first name attribute of record A to all values held within the first name attribute of record B, looking for matches among the values. You can elect to only match on operational values if desired.
  • When two profiles merge, the resulting profile contains the aggregate of all the crosswalks of the two contributing profiles and thus the associated attributes and values from those crosswalks. The arrays behind the attributes naturally merge as well, producing for each attribute an array that holds the aggregation of all the values from the contributing attributes. Relationships benefit from the same architecture, and behave in the same manner as described for merged entities. The surviving entity ID (or relationship ID) for the merged profile (or relationship) is that of the oldest of the two contributors. Other than that, there really isn’t a concept of a winner object and a loser object.
  • When two profiles merge the resulting profile contains references to all the interactions that were previously associated with the contributing profiles. (Note that Interactions do not reference relationships.)
  • If profile B is unmerged from the previous merge of A and B, then B will be reinstated with its original entity ID. All of the attributes (and associated values), relationships, and interactions profile B brought into the merged profile will be removed from the merged profile and returned to profile B.