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Data discovery and organization

Qlik Catalog organizes data as hierarchies where objects are represented logically via entities [tables], attributes [columns/fields] and relationship properties [key/value] pairs.

Source Hierarchies are top level folder systems designed for drill in and drill out navigation of Data Sources.

Sources are collections of entities that share source and structural attributes that assist with loading and validation.

Entities are tables comprised of attributes [columns/fields] that answer specific relational queries.

New data is readily incorporated into source folders upon validation, profiling, and inheritance of attributes.

Parent object information

To view source information for an entity or entity metrics for a field, select the object (via tick or checkbox) and note the appearance of a carat next to breadcrumbs trail following Field or Entity at the top of the screen. Select the icon expand collapse parent information (carat) icon to display or collapse parent information for the selected entity or field.

Display source information for an entity

Carat to right of breadcrumb path is collapsed to hide detailed metadata for the object

Display entity information for a field

Carat to right of breadcrumb path is expanded to display detailed metadata for the object

Wildcard behavior for global and local search

The default search behavior for global and local search changed with the release of Qlik CatalogNovember 2021 SR1. Previously, the default behavior was "contains"-- if a name (or other field) contained the search term, a match resulted. For example, if a source was named "Payroll", a search term of "rol" would match it. In code, Catalog both prepended and appended the SQL multi-character wildcard "%". Now, with this change the default behavior is "starts with" -- if a name (or other field) starts with the search term, a match results. A search term of "pay" matches a source named "Payroll". In code, Catalog now only appends the SQL multi-character wildcard.

The user may manually prepend a wildcard, either the multi-character wildcard or the single-character wildcard "_". Searching for "%rol" mimics the prior behavior.

This change was made to enable users to perform "starts with"-only searches, which could not previously be performed. It is also more performant and makes the global and local searches consistent with the Catalog module search. Set the following core_env property to restor ethe previous behavior:

If a customer wishes to restore the previous behavior, they may set the following core_env property to true: # Flag to control if the searched term in Catalog will have a percent sign prepended to it implicitly. # The term always has a trailing percent sign appended to it implicitly. If the value of this flag # is set to false, the user must put the percent sign (%) themselves in the search term for the code # to do wildcard search. Default: false #prepend.leading.percent.sign.for.catalog.search=false

Global search

To search on names across a cluster in all grids and areas of the application, the global search field is available in the middle of the top navigation bar.

Global search

Global search on any object name

Preliminary search results display; select View all results in the upper right of the search results to open a screen with more information and drill-in options.

Global search result icons
icon description
icon view parent source View parent source
icon view parent entity View parent entity
icon view source View source
icon view entity View entity
icon view field View field
Global search results: all results view

Global search results display immediate parent and child objects

Information noteInclusion of profile values in global search can impact performance.

Local search

Local search can be found directly above the grid and returns results found in that grid.

Local search results

Local Search Returns Results

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