Scan a System

Scanning a system ingests metadata into the Syniti Knowledge Platform. Organizations often have too much data in too many systems to realistically process and understand. Ingesting a system into the Syniti Knowledge Platform provides a single source of truth for this metadata that exists throughout an organization’s enterprise architecture.

Once the metadata is scanned, there are a lot of ways to use this metadata, such as:

• Link to terms to provide business context to the system metadata objects (tables, views, fields, etc)

• Use in Quality to support the creation of opportunity and error views that can be used to evaluate the quality of the underlying data

• Create a dataset to support the identification and classification of fields within the system. Datasets provide context for various aspects of the Syniti Knowledge Platform, such as

  • within Quality to define opportunity views; rules are run against these view assess the quality of the data

  • to define data objects, such as Customer Master and Material Master, that define the fields required by the business to describe these data objects

  • to catalog analytic requirements

• Use in data migration to support the data design by providing the metadata for the tables and fields that are in scope from both the source and target systems and field and value mapping tasks.

• Profile tables and views in the system metadata to understand the content in more detail, examine patterns and spot anomalies in the data

Scanning a system is a multi-step process across several pages in the Syniti Knowledge Platform. When performing steps within the Syniti Knowledge Platform, refer to the page-level help for more information.

Note

Changes to the SAP system that affect the metadata of the tables, such as adding new fields (z fields) to a table, made during the system scan can cause issues with the ordering of the returned metadata that can create duplicate XIDs to be created. Before the scan results are sent to the Syniti Knowledge Platform for ingestion, duplicate records are filtered out.

1. Download, install, register and configure an SKP connector. This must be performed by an Administrator.

   1. Contact Syniti Support to obtain the scripts to download.

   2. Refer to the Syniti Knowledge Platform Connector: Security, Installation, Requirements & Troubleshooting knowledge base article for details on how to install and configure the SKP connector.

2. Create a system.

3. Create a connection for the system via the Connections tab. You must associate the system to the SKP connector created in Step 1 with access to the system. You may select multiple SKP connectors as long as they all have network access to the system. If there are multiple SKP connectors, you can specify a "preferred" SKP connector, which is treated as the default SKP connector selection in the Scans tab and throughout the Syniti Knowledge Platform.
   There are two ways to create a connection:

   1. Use a form to create a connection used by all applicable usages

   2. Use a connection string that contains the usage-specific format and connectivity details to the system

      Note

      You must have Metadata Scanning usage enabled for the connection in order for the connection to appear on the Scans tab.

4. Test the connection.

5. Add scan filters to limit the metadata being scanned. Refer to Metadata Scanner Filters for more information.

6. Return to Systems and click the Scans tab to initiate a system scan using the Metadata Scanning connection. Once the system has been scanned, the system objects appear on the Objects tab.

View Scanned Objects

Once the scan successfully runs, scan results display on the Objects tab.

To view scanned objects:

1. Verify you’re in the Catalog module of the Syniti Knowledge Platform.
   Or
   Select Catalog from the Home menu to navigate to the Catalog module of the Syniti Knowledge Platform.

2. Search for the system.

3. Click the Objects tab.