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Adding alternate keys for external reference fields

Updated on April 6, 2022

Enable the creation of data reference fields that are based on remotely sourced data objects by defining alternate key fields. Through alternate keys, the system identifies the fields that constitute a reference to a unique instance of a data object, regardless of the object's source.

For example, you want to create a data reference to a Customer data object that you want to source from an external customer management system. After updating the data page source for the data object to the customer management system, you update the data page parameters with alternate key source information. Then, in your Pega Platform application, you add the data reference that the system can now correctly source and validate through the alternate key.
Before you begin: Ensure that you have a data page with parameters defined for externally sourced records. For more information, see Creating a data page.
  1. In the navigation pane of Dev Studio, click App.
  2. Expand the class that contains the data page with the parameter for which you want to specify an alternative identifier.
  3. Click Data ModelData PageName of the data page.
  4. On the Parameters tab, select the Is this page used for alternate key storage? checkbox.
  5. In the Linked field column that appears, enter the name of an existing property for each parameter.
  6. Save your changes.
For example: In your banking application, you want to load the details for a customer record from an external customer management system. On the Contact data page that defines how to load the record, you add a parameter, CustID, and an existing field in your application's Customer data object, Email_Address, as a unique identifier for the record. When using the data page as the source for a data reference field, the system validates Email_Address as the identifier by which to load a unique instance of the customer record. See the following image for reference:
Sample configuration of an alternate key
A sample configuration of an alternate identifier for the external customer parameter.
What to do next: Add reference fields that are externally sourced to your data model. For more information, see Adding single-value fields to forms.

Tags

Pega Platform 8.7 Data Integration

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