This topic provides information about the Schema Editor using which you can create or modify the data structure and record types for sources, lookups, temporary targets, and targets in a map. The resulting XML based file includes the schema, record recognition rules, and record validation rules information and is stored with the .schema extension.

Schemas are particularly important when connections to data do not contain metadata that describes the data. All existing database tables contain metadata that describe the data format. Some data, however, do not have data structure descriptions. In these cases, a schema must be provided.

In some cases, a schema provides connector-specific metadata for data handling. Schema are used to map source fields to target fields. They are also used to validate data against an expected schema format. Finally, schema are used by the engine to parse data that is read on the source side and format data written on the target side.

A schema consists of: