Defining an ingestion source

The Information Store keeps a list of all the sources from which it has ingested data. Before it can ingest data, you must tell the Information Store about your source. In the ingestion mapping file, you then specify the data source name in the mapping definition for each entity type and link type.

The i2 Analyze deployment toolkit and the ETL toolkit both have a command for adding information about an ingestion source to the Information Store.

The deployment toolkit command looks like this:

setup -t addInformationStoreIngestionSource
      -p ingestionSourceName=src_name
      -p ingestionSourceDescription=src_display_name

While the ETL toolkit command looks like this:

addInformationStoreIngestionSource
      -n src_name
      -d src_display_name

In both cases, src_name is a unique name for the ingestion source, which also appears in the mapping file. src_display_name is a friendlier name for the ingestion source that might appear in the user interface of applications that display records from the Information Store.

Important: The value that you provide for src_name must be 30 characters or fewer in length. Also, do not use the word ANALYST as the name of your ingestion source. That name is reserved for records that analysts create in the Information Store through a user interface.

If you are using the deployment toolkit, open a command prompt and navigate to the toolkit\scripts directory. If you are using the ETL toolkit, navigate to the etltoolkit directory.
Run the addInformationStoreIngestionSource command, specifying the short and display names of your ingestion source.
For example:
```
setup -t addInformationStoreIngestionSource
      -p ingestionSourceName=EXAMPLE
      -p ingestionSourceDescription="Example data source"
```
If the Information Store already contains information about an ingestion source with the name EXAMPLE, this command has no effect.

After you complete this task, you have performed all the necessary actions, and gathered all the necessary information, to be able to write ingestion mapping files. The next task is to create the ingestion mapping file for your ingestion source.