Working with merged chart items

You can merge two or more entities together when charting entities and links on a chart surface, whether from the same or different databases. If you have merged items from the same database, you can also choose to merge the records in iBase as a second step.

To merge iBase items on a chart surface:

Merging items on the chart surface - Select the chart items that you want to merge, and select Analyze > Merge and Combine > Merge Entities. The resulting merged chart item is shown on the chart as a single merged item and is treated as a single 'real world' object, for example when finding the path between entities or expanding. Any links between the merged chart items are not displayed.
Merging records in iBase - With an item selected on the chart that contains at least two iBase records from the same database, on the Selection page of the Data Sources Task Pane select Merge in iBase. Information from the records being merged will be added to the primary record before the records are deleted. Any links will either reference the primary record, or if invalid, will be deleted.

Merging items on the chart surface before merging the records in iBase keeps the records in the properties of the merged chart item, and preserves the record ID (database key).

Note: To see the record IDs of the merged chart item, right-click on the merged chart item and from the shortcut menu, select Edit Item Properties. The keys are shown in the Data Records folder for the database.

Commands such as Expand, Find Path, and Find Common Neighbors behave as you would expect. For example, expanding a merged chart item will expand all the links and link end entities associated with all the entities in the merged chart item, and finding a path will take any additional links and link end entities into account.

All the entity types in a merged chart item are used when expanding, searching and so on, including any entity types that are excluded as part of the charting settings. For example, when finding a path between a Person entity and a merged Person/Vehicle entity, where the Vehicle entity type is excluded, the links belonging to the Vehicle entity are considered.

The Show and Explore commands are slightly different because they apply only to single iBase records:


Option	Description
Show	When you select Show for a merged chart entity, the Show List dialog is displayed. Select the record that you want to show.
Explore	When you select Explore, the Select a Record dialog is displayed. Select the record that you want to examine in the Explore window. This is a useful way of finding out which links are associated with which component of a merged chart item.

Note: You cannot update the chart when you edit the iBase record of a merged chart item.

Merging entities with different semantic types

You may want to merge entities that have different semantic types. For example, to associate an organization with its web address, or a person with a vehicle. In this case, the merged chart item is assigned the semantic type that is the lowest common parent of their semantic types. Depending on the semantic types of the individual chart items, this may be an abstract semantic type, such as the Entity semantic type.

If the semantic type of the merged chart item is not useful to you, you can assign a different one as part of its properties. For example, you might choose to assign the Organization semantic type to the item created by merging Organization and Web Address entities.