Cloud Software Group, Inc. EBX®
Documentation > User Guide > EBX® Metadata Management > Advanced data services
Navigation mode Documentation > User Guide > EBX® Metadata Management > Advanced data services

# Lineage

## Overview

You can display the asset or instance lineage. It’s a main feature that explains how an asset or instance is composed and linked to other assets and instances.

## Display the lineage

### From the asset view

You can start the lineage by selecting an asset in the hierarchical view or the table view. You just have to click on the lineage icon on the top of the view.

From the hierarchical view:

From the table view:

You can also start the lineage while you are reading the asset view form. Click on the lineage icon on the top of the asset view form:

### From the instance view

You can start the lineage by selecting an instance in the hierarchical view or the table view. You just have to click on the lineage icon on the top of the view.

From the hierarchical view:

From the table view:

You can also start the lineage while you are reading the instance view form. Click on the lineage icon on the top of the instance view form:

## Browse the lineage

Once you have started the lineage service you will see:

- The asset or instance you previously selected: if your selection is an asset, you will see it with its instance.

- Direct children of the instance or asset.

- Action buttons.

- The overview toolbox for helping you browsing the lineage graph.

### Overview toolbox

The overview toolbox helps you to scroll the lineage graph when this one is big because of multiple nodes and links. You can drag the overview box to any location in the lineage view.

### Expand/Collapse a node

By clicking on the + button near the node name, you will expand it to display its children. The + button is only available if children exist.

When a node is expanded, you can collapse it by clicking on the - button near the node name.

### Display node links

If a node contains links to display, you will see the link icon near the node name (icon with two arrows). By clicking on this button, you will display:

- node incoming links

- node outgoing links

If all links of the node are displayed, the link icon is highlighted.

If the lineage is too complex with lot of links, you can click on a node to highlight its links.

Click anywhere else on the lineage graph to remove link highlighting.

### Display full lineage for a node

The first lineage view helps you to browse the lineage step by step (by clicking manually on each link button). This graph is called: Browsable lineage If you want to display the full lineage of the selected node, click on the focus icon near the node. This button is only available if the node contains links.

By clicking on this icon, a new lineage graph view will be displayed. This graph is called: Asset lineage This view contains the currently selected node and its children. It also displays all links for the node, children nodes, and other nodes recursively.

The node from where you have clicked on the focus icon is displayed with a purple background.

In this graph, every node head title contains the instance name. The template is Instance Name > Node name.

Click on a node to highlight links if they exist.

This graph view is different from the previous one because it will not display the default asset hierarchy view but an exploded version (to be more readable).

Below is an example of a complex lineage view with Browsable lineage graph and Asset lineage graph. In this example, all links from EBX_REP_PERSON node and its children links are displayed recursively.

As you can see, the full lineage is difficult to read because each asset node is grouped into the instance node. On the other hand, in the screenshot below, each asset node is separated and the instance name is displayed in the node group title.

### Move a node

You can move a node by grabbing it with your mouse. You can only move an Instance node.

Documentation > User Guide > EBX® Metadata Management > Advanced data services