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Removing semantic types

You can delete one or more of the semantic types from Talend Dictionary Service and remove them from the list of recognized data types in Talend Data Stewardship.

You can delete both predefined semantic types as well as predefined standard types.

The variety of semantic types that are present by default in Talend Data Stewardship can be troublesome in certain situations. For example, a five-digit number can be interpreted as a American ZIP code, but also as a French or German one since they share the same format.

Let's say that you are working in an American company, and you only have to deal with data coming from American clients, including ZIP codes. You would prefer to keep only the American ZIP code in the list of recognized semantic types.

Using Talend Dictionary Service, you will simply remove the other semantic types that match the five-digit format and only leave US Postal Code. The change will then be ported instantly in Talend Data Stewardship, and you will from now on validate a ZIP code column against the semantic type US Postal Code.

Procedure

  1. From the homepage, click SEMANTIC TYPES.
  2. Click the search icon on the top-right corner of the page and enter postal to filter the list of semantic types and display only the Zip code types.
  3. Select the check boxes next to the names of the Zip code semantic types you want to delete, all semantic types that match five-digit numbers in this example except US Postal Code, and click REMOVE SEMANTIC TYPE on top of the page.
    You can select the Select All check box and delete all the semantic types in one click.
  4. Accept to remove the semantic types when prompted.
    When you delete a semantic type which is already used in a data model attached to a campaign, the attributes in the data model automatically switch to text and the validity of all tasks is recomputed. This means data which could display as invalid with the initial semantic type may look as valid with the text semantic type.

    Also, an entry is added to the history of these tasks to show the removal of the semantic type.

Results

You have deleted all the semantic types compatibles with five-digit numbers but one. From now on, when adding new data models, you can set only US Postal Code as the semantic type for columns with Zip code data.

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