First steps in hale studio

hale»studio is an application that strives to assist you in creating schema mappings, allowing the transformation of data that conforms to the source schema to data that is compliant to the target schema. hale»studio combines both the mapping creation and the transformation, facilitating an interactive mapping by giving feedback on each change to the mapping by transforming a given sample data set.

A schema in hale»studio is a collection of classes/types with well-defined properties/attributes. Schemas may be complex, i.e. the properties may again have properties themselves. Before starting with the mapping creation you should familiarize yourself with the source and target schemas.

For the definition of the schema mapping a declarative approach is used. The mapping (or alignment) consists of a set of relations, represented by mapping cells. First, you have to identify the relations between the source and target types, then, for each type relation, identify the relations between the corresponding properties.

For a quick start there is a tutorial video online - or you can follow the instructions in the Get started with hale»studio guide. It will show you a simple example project and get you going on starting your own alignment project.

A link like the above, with the icon, means clicking on the link will trigger an action in the application, in this case, launching the guide.

Main workflow

When creating an alignment project you typically follow these main steps:

1. Import the schema of the source data you want to map
2. Import the target schema
3. Import a source data set (optional)
4. Identify the relevant target types
5. Identify and add the relations between source an target types (see Identify type relations)
6. For each type relation analyze
   • What information is present in the source classe(s)?
   • What information is needed in the target class?
   • How can the target properties be populated from the source?
   to identify the relations between the source and target properties, then add them to the mapping.
7. For each change to the mapping, verify if the transformation result meets your expectations (optional, needs source data)
8. Save the transformed data to a file (optional, needs source data)
9. or, alternatively, use the defined mapping to transform external data or save the project and use it in a separate process to transform data via the command line.

What is a Schema?

What is an Alignment?

Loading and browsing schemas

Working with a source data set

Mapping schema elements

Save the transformation result

Transform external data

Transformation via the command line