Union schemas overview

In this video, we’ll go over the concept of union schemas and how they operate in Real-time Customer Profile. Real-time Customer Profile allows you to create robust centralized Profiles containing customer attributes and timestamped events of customer interactions across systems integrated with Adobe Experience Platform. The format and structure of this data is provided by experienced data model schemas with each schema being based on a specific XDM Class.

Schemas can be created for multiple use cases, referencing the same Class but containing fields specific to their use case. When a schema is enabled for Profile it becomes part of a union schema. In other words, union schemas are composed of multiple schemas that share the same Class and have been enabled for Profile. The union schema enables you to see an amalgamation of all the fields contained within schemas sharing the same Class. Real-time Customer Profile uses the union schema to create a holistic view of each individual customer.

In the platform UI, you can view the union schemas as for your organization. Select Profiles in the left navigation, then select the Union Schema tab. Here, we can see the structure of the union schema for the XDM Individual Profile Class. If we want to view the union schema for a different Class we can select one from the dropdown in the left rail.

In the canvas we can expand and explore the different fields that the schema contains. Select any field and we can view its details in the right rail, such as its data type, description, last modified date and more. Under Contributing schemas and datasets we can view the names of the datasets related to that schema that are ingesting data into the selected field.

In the left rail select All contributing schemas to view a list of the Profile enabled schemas that contribute their fields to the union. If we select a specific schema from the list, the fields it contributes are highlighted in the canvas while all unrelated fields are grayed out. We can also use the left rail to view a list of identities that are included in the union schema. If we select a listed identity the canvas automatically updates as needed to display the field wherever it may be nested. We can now view the details of the field in the right rail, including links to the related datasets that are supplying identity data to the union schema.

Finally, we can also use the left rail to view any relationships that have been defined for schemas based on the selected Class. A relationship is a way of connecting two schemas belonging to different Classes in order to gain more complex insights into customer data. If any relationships have been defined, the individual fields that establish these relationships will be listed here in the left rail. See the XDM documentation for more information on schema relationships. You should now have a basic understanding of the role of union schemas in Real-time Customer Profile and how to explore them in the platform UI. Thanks for watching. -