Categories let you classify and organize the contents of your data catalog.
Categories are a lot like Data Federation directories: they serve as containers for the objects in your data catalog. Anything in the data catalog—SQL views, data services, shared files, even Data Federation directories themselves—can be assigned to a category. Categories are hierarchical, they have attributes, and Data Federation ACLs regulate access to them. You can think of categories as an alternate, parallel set of directories.
The difference between categories and grid directories is that categories exist entirely for your convenience. While every Data Federation object is represented in a directory in the data catalog, assigning objects to categories is optional. When an object is added to a category, you can navigate to it by browsing either the directories or the categories in the data catalog.
Categories make it easier for Data Federation users to find what they need. Here are some ways to use them:
Objects that are buried many layers down in the Data Federation directory hierarchy, or that reside in large directories where individual entries are hard to find, can be placed in one or more categories that are tailored to the needs of the people who use them.
You can use categories to make selected objects accessible to users whose permissions don’t allow them to reach the objects through the directory hierarchy. (To access a Data Federation object, a user needs permissions not only on the object itself, but on all parent objects in the path to the target object. For example, to read the file Dinosaurs.doc in /Shares/pets, you must have read permission on the root directory /, on /Shares, on /Shares/pets, and on /Shares/pets/Dinosaurs.doc. This rule applies to categories and shares as well as Data Federation directories.)
Categories give you great flexibility.When you rearrange categories and their contents, it has no effect on the underlying Data Federation objects or directories.
By default, users who are not members of the DataProviders group have only read permission on the default categories (the root category and ViewLibrary)—that is, users can list the contents of the default categories and read any objects for which permissions have not been explicitly denied.
Some objects are automatically assigned to categories when you create the objects:
ViewLibrary and the root category are the default categories.
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