Tracing a semantic definition

Trace the semantic definition of a field in a report to understand its meaning.

Three methods are used to provide an answer to a definition lookup and apply in the following order:

direct semantic link from a term in a business glossary
data flow lineage to the data warehouse or other data stores in the physical architecture and semantic up to a business glossary
name matching between business glossary term and field name

Before you begin

You have been assigned an object role with at least the Metadata Viewing capability.
A glossary has been created and populated.
Glossary terms are mapped semantically to the corresponding data in the technical architecture.

Open the object page.
Click the Semantic Flow tab.
Select Definition from the Type list.
You can also select Both to trace the Definition as well as the Usage.
Click the List tab to open the detailed column level lineage report.
For example, you need to know the meaning of CustomerPaymentType in the Customer Payments report. CustomerPaymentType is defined by the Customer Payment Type glossary term.
Click the Diagram tab to open a graphical view of the lineage.

In this example, the blue dashed line represents the semantic link from the report field to the glossary term.

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