Search in the Catalog

Introduction

Finding the right data to use in your app development is made easier using the search functionality in the Catalog. The details of registered data assets can be accessed using the Search API, or viewed in the Asset details screen of the Catalog or the Integration pane in Studio Pro. This document describes how you can search in Catalog.

Search in the Catalog

Details of Registered Assets

You can start searching from the Home page, or click the Catalog tab to go to the Search pane and Asset Details screen. This section describes important properties of registered assets: services, datasets, and attributes.

Versions

Every published service has a version number. Apps that consume a service will consume from a specific version. Updates and changes to a service will be indicated by a change in the version number. Several versions of a registered service may be available in the Catalog. The service version is displayed in the Asset Details.

Environments

The Catalog is a register of published services that are deployed to a particular environment. You can have multiple versions of a service for each environment by giving them different version numbers.

The environment also provides an indication of the quality of the dataset that is available. Shared datasets that are available from a production environment will have production-level data, while those in non-production environments (acceptance, development) could be populated with data that may not be reliable for building stable apps but be useful for development work.

Search results show the service endpoints. If a version of a service is deployed on both a test and acceptance environment, two endpoints are shown in the search results.

Asset Description

The description that is included as part of the published service metadata. This description can be edited at the service, dataset, and attribute level by owners and curators.

Searching for Assets

When searching in the Catalog, the following fields are searched:

• Service endpoint: Name, Description, Tags
• Application: Name
• Dataset: Name, Description
• Attribute: Name, Description
• Association: Name

From the Catalog home page, you can search the Catalog in the following ways:

• Type a search term in the search box and click Search (search strings must be at least 3 alphanumeric characters)
• Click one of the tags provided in the search suggestions
• Click one of the services under Most Recent Changes
• Click one of the services under Popular Services
• Click the Catalog tab

Any of the above actions will take you to the Search screen.

Search Screen

The Search screen is divided into the search pane on the left, the asset details of the selected asset in the center panel, and the asset metadata panel on the right.

Search Pane

The collapsible Search pane is used to search for registered assets in the Catalog:

Specifying the Search

Enter a search string in the Search area with a minimum of 3 alphanumeric characters. Searching for the wildcard * or the empty string '' will return all registered items.

Filters

You can filter search results by:

• Environment type (the Production environment filter is active by default)
• Technology
• CRUD (Creatable, Readable, Updatable, or Deletable) capabilities
• Ownership

In the Filter dialog box, check the filters you want to include in your search, then click Apply. The search results will only display results in the selected filters.

You will also see any restrictions that apply, including Count and Pagination and whether something is Sortable or Filterable.

Search Results

The number of items satisfying the search criteria (search string plus filters) are shown in the search results list. The order of the items presented in the search results will be a combination of the following:

• Closest match to the search string
• Popularity of the service (the number of connections)
• Validated assets before non-validated ones

When an item in the search results is selected, the Landscape tab shows the network of connections and dependencies of the selected item in the Landscape.

Selected Asset Details

When you click a search result, the details are displayed in this panel.

Details of a Selected Service

The contract of the published service (the $metadata document) contains the details of what is exposed in the service. This includes the metadata of the exposed datasets (or entity sets in Mendix Studio Pro) and their exposed attributes, associations, and types. The contract metadata is displayed, along with any Catalog-curated metadata.

When a service is selected in the search results, the following details are displayed:

• Application icon
• Name of the Service
• Non-discoverable icon – if the service has been set to non-discoverable (by default, services are discoverable to all users in your company and no icon appears)
• Validated icon – if it has been set for the asset
• Environment Name – where the app is deployed
• Version – version number of the service
• Connections – number of apps that consume the service
• Authentication – authentication information, and the option to Request access if available
• A description of the service
• All Datasets that are exposed in the service (you can expand each one to see details of the attributes and associations)

You can perform the following actions from this screen:

• Share – click to copy the link to this asset detail page to the clipboard so that you can share it with others.
• Download Contract – retrieve and save the OData contract from the service endpoint to your computer. You can upload this in the Catalog to register it manually.
• Copy URI – click to copy the URI of the service contract to the clipboard. This URI can be used to integrate the service in other enterprise applications.
• Copy Dataset URI – click to copy the URI of the dataset to the clipboard for use in other business applications.

Details for a Selected Dataset

When a Dataset is selected in the search results, the following details are displayed in the Search Details panel.

General Information

The source and endpoint details of the dataset are displayed:

• Dataset name
• Part of – a link to the service details page that the dataset is exposed in
• Version number of the service that the dataset is exposed in
• Connections – the number of apps that consume this dataset
• A description of the dataset
• Authentication method

You can perform the following actions from this screen:

• Copy URI – click to copy the URI of the dataset to the clipboard for use in other business applications
• Share – click to copy the link to this dataset detail page to the clipboard so that it can be shared with others
• Edit – click to access the dataset edit screen

Dataset Information

The Attributes tab lists the attributes that are exposed for the dataset in the service.

Under the Associations tab for each dataset, the associations are displayed:

• Name – the name of the association that is exposed in the OData service contract.
• Navigates to – the dataset the association is made with. Click the link to see the details of the associated dataset in the Catalog.
• Multiplicity – indicates the multiplicity.

Metadata Panel

The metadata panel at the right of the asset details screen displays details from the service metadata contract and values that have been curated in the Catalog:

Tags

These are the tags that have been assigned to the service in the Catalog (for more information, see the Adding or Editing Tags to a Service section of How to Curate Registered Assets). Tags assigned at a service-level propagate down to the datasets and attributes exposed in the service.

Business Owner

This is a link to the business owner of the data exposed in the service. For more information, see the Changing Owners of an App section of How to Curate Registered Assets.

Technical Owner

This is a technical contact for the app. By default, this is the owner who registered the service.

For apps hosted in Mendix Cloud, the Technical Owner is the app developer that deployed the app.

Technical owners can be changed.

Discoverability

When a service is registered, by default, it is Discoverable in the Catalog. When this is set, all users in your company can find it, view the details, and consume it. The owners of an asset and curators can set a service as Non-discoverable, which means it is not visible to users unless they are the owner or a curator.

See the Curation Bar section below for changing Discoverability as the owner of the service or curator.

The following discoverability values can be set:

• Discoverable – all users in your company can see and consume the asset in the Catalog and Studio Pro
• Non-Discoverable – the asset is only visible to owners, curators, and the Mendix Admin in the Catalog; it is not included in the search results in the Integration pane of Studio Pro, or any other client of the Catalog API.

Validated

This indicates if the service has been Validated. For details on changing Validated as an owner or curator, see the Curation Bar section below. See the Validated section of Curate Registered Assets to learn about what this means.

Application

A link to the application from which the service was published in the given environment.

Environment Type

The environment type indicates the quality and the status of the data that the exposed datasets connect to. The following environment types can be specified:

• Production
• Non-Production
• Sandbox (the Mendix Free App environment)

Curation Option

The Curation Option is displayed in the asset detail screen if you are the owner of the selected asset or a curator. In Edit, you can edit the information that is displayed in the Catalog for an asset:

• For the selected service, you can edit Application Details, Service Details, and Authentication

For further details, see the Discoverable and Validated section of Curate Registered Assets.

Service and Dataset URIs

The service URI is the location of the service contract of the service, also known as the service endpoint. The endpoints of all exposed datasets (entity sets) are defined in the contract. From the details screen of the service and dataset, you can copy the URIs to the clipboard by clicking the Copy URI. These URIs can be used for directly accessing the contract and resource in BI applications.

Download the Contract of a Service

For a selected service, you can click Download to download the service contract that is located at the service endpoint. A ZIP file that includes the all the files that make up the full contract is generated and downloaded.

The resulting ZIP file is named DataHub_<service_name>_<service_version>_<technology>.zip where the string <technology> identifies the service protocol.

Here is an example:

When you click Download, the following file is downloaded: DataHub_SAP_Intelligence_1.0_OData4.zip. This ZIP file has the folder DataHub_SAP_Intelligence_1.0_OData4, which contains all the metadata files that define the service.

Viewing Search Results in the Landscape

When an item is selected in the search results pane, you can click the Landscape tab to see the network of connections and dependencies for the selected asset. This provides a graphical representation to indicate the context and relevance of a selected item and the data for the exposed datasets.

Search using the API

To use the Catalog Search API, see Search API.