Merged data
When data is merged as a result of a paste or import, or after you use one of the merge and combine tools, as much information as possible is retained.
- Location on the chart.
- Chart item type, for example entity type Subscriber.
- Date, time, and ordered or controlling state.
- Semantic type assignment.
- Existing cards. The merged chart item also inherits any cards on the chart items that are merged into it.
- Data records
The resulting labels depend on the label merge and paste rules settings that you select on the page of the Chart Properties window. For example, if the label of one vehicle entity is ABC123 and the label of the other vehicle entity is Blue articulated truck, you can choose to append the labels, which results in ABC123 Blue articulated truck. For links, if Sum Numeric Links is selected, the resulting label is the total value of the merged link labels.
When merged items contain information that would otherwise be lost, a card that contains this information is added to the resulting item. Examples of information of this type are date and time, description, grades, source type, and source reference. A card is only created when a merged item contains information that is different from the item into which it is merged. When you are merging several items, a card is created for each item that contains different information.
If entities that are being merged both contain instances of the same attribute class, the attribute values are merged according to the rules that are specified in the attribute class definition.
When merged items contains data records, the data records are maintained separately in the merged item. Each data record is identified by its unique database key.
Resulting links also retain the position, strength, type, and width of the first selected link and incorporate the direction of the links that are merged into it.
Resulting entities inherit all links from the merged entities.