Create an XDM schema

Learn how to create an XDM schema for mobile app events.

Standardization and interoperability are key concepts behind Adobe Experience Platform. Experience Data Model (XDM), driven by Adobe, is an effort to standardize customer experience data and define schemas for customer experience management.

What are XDM schemas?

XDM is a publicly documented specification designed to improve the power of digital experiences. It provides common structures and definitions that allow any application to communicate with Platform services. By adhering to XDM standards, all customer experience data can be incorporated into a common representation that can deliver insights in a faster, more integrated way. You can gain valuable insights from customer actions, define customer audiences through segments, and express customer attributes for personalization purposes.

Experience Platform uses schemas to describe the structure of data in a consistent and reusable way. By defining data consistently across systems, it becomes easier to retain meaning and therefore gain value from data.

Before data can be ingested into Platform, a schema must be composed to describe the data’s structure and provide constraints to the type of data that can be contained within each field. Schemas consist of a base class and zero or more schema field groups.

For more information on the schema composition model, including design principles and best practices, see the basics of schema composition or the course Model Your Customer Experience Data with XDM.

Prerequisites

To complete the lesson, you must have permission to create an Experience Platform schema.

Learning objectives

In this lesson, you will:

• Create a schema in the Data Collection interface
• Add a standard field group to the schema
• Create and add a custom field group to the schema

Navigate to schemas

1. Log into the Adobe Experience Cloud.

2. Open the app switcher, then select Data Collection

   

3. Make sure you are in the Experience Platform sandbox you are using for this tutorial.

   NOTE

   Customers of Platform-based applications like Real-time CDP should use a development sandbox for this tutorial. Other customers will use the default production sandbox.

4. Select Schemas under Data Management.

   

You are now on the main schemas page and are presented with a list of any existing schemas. You can also see tabs corresponding to the core building blocks of a schema:

• Field groups are reusable components that define one or more fields to capture specific data, such as personal details, hotel preferences, or address.
• Classes define the behavioral aspects of the data that the schema contains. For example: XDM ExperienceEvent captures time-series, event data and XDM Individual Profile captures attribute data about an individual.
• Data types are used as reference field types in classes or field groups in the same way as basic literal fields.

The above descriptions are a high-level overview. For more details, see the Schema building blocks video or read Basics of schema composition in the product documentation.

In this tutorial, you use the Consumer Experience Event field group and create a custom one to demonstrate the process.

Luma app schema architecture

In a real-world scenario, the schema design process might look like this:

• Gather business requirements.
• Find prebuilt field groups to cover as many requirements as possible.
• Create custom field groups for any gaps.

For learning purposes, you will use prebuilt and custom field groups.

• Consumer Experience Event: Prebuilt field group that has many common fields.
• App Information: Custom field group designed to mimic TrackState/TrackAction Analytics concepts.

Create a schema

1. Select Create Schema to bring the options dropdown menu, then select XDM ExperienceEvent.

   

2. Search for Consumer Experience Event.

3. You can preview the fields and/or read the description for more details before selecting.

4. Select the checkbox and then Add field groups.

   

   You are brought back to the main schema composition screen where you can see all the available fields.

5. Give your schema a name by selecting Untitled schema from the top left and then providing a Display name & Description, for example Luma Tutorial Mobile and "Luma App" schema for Adobe Tutorial

6. Select Save.

   

Create a custom data type

You begin by creating a custom data type describing the two events:

• Screen view
• App interaction

1. Select the Data types tab, then select Create data type.

   

2. Give it a Display name and Description, for example App Information and Custom data type describing "Screen Views" & "App Actions"

   

   TIP

   Always use readable, descriptive display names for your custom fields, as this practice makes them more accessible to marketers when the fields surface in downstream services like the segment builder.

3. To add a field, select the (+) button.

   This field is a container object for app interaction. Give it a camel-case Field name appInteraction, display name App Interaction, and type Object.

4. Select Apply.

   

5. To measure how often an action has occurred, add a field by selecting the (+) button next to the appInteraction object you created.

6. Give it a camel-case Field name appAction, display name of App Action and type Measure.

   This step would be the equivalent of a success event in Adobe Analytics.

7. Select Apply.

   

8. Add a field describing the type of interaction by selecting the (+) button next to the appInteraction object.

9. Give it a Field name name, display name of Name and type String.

   This step is the equivalent of a dimension in Adobe Analytics.

   

10. Scroll to the bottom of the right rail and select Apply.

11. Follow the same pattern to create an appStateDetails object containing a Measure field called screenView and two Strings called screenName and screenType.

12. Select Save.

    

Add a custom field group

Now add a custom field group using your custom data type:

1. Open the schema that you created earlier in this lesson.

2. Select Add next to Field groups.

   

3. This time you create a custom field group by selecting the Create new field group radio button near the top, then provide a name and description, for example, App Interactions and Fields for app interactions.

   

4. From the main composition screen, add a field to the root of the schema.

5. Select the (+) next to the name of the schema.

6. In the right rail, provide a Field name of appInformation, a display name of App Information.

7. Select App Information from the Type drop down, the data type you created in the previous exercise.

8. Select Apply.

   

You now have a schema to use for the rest of the tutorial.

Next: Create a datastream

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