Primary Keys
This document describes the configuration used by the InterMine integration system to identify objects that are identical to each other. Two objects are deemed to be identical if they have matching fields for at least one primary key used for the class of object. Primary keys are defined in the resources directory of the data source, and should be called "$DATA-SOURCE-NAME_keys.properties".
Data source keys configuration files#
For each data source, there is a properties file providing a list of the primary keys that can be used when integrating that data source. The file lists the primary keys by name for each class. When loading objects of a particular class the keys define which fields should be used to look up in the database for existing objects to merge with.
The keys are specified in each source in a file: $DATA-SOURCE-NAME/src/main/resources/$DATA-SOURCE-NAME_keys.properties.
These _keys.properties files define keys in the format:
The name_of_key can be any string but you must use different names if defining more than one key for the same class, for example in uniprot_keys.properties there are two different keys defined for Gene:
Use common names for identical keys between sources as this will help avoid duplicating database indexes. Postgres uses the key names to create indexes.
Each key should list one or more fields that can be a combination of attributes of the class specified or [references]{.title-ref} to other classes - in which case there should be a key defined for the referenced class as well.
Warning The build system will use any valid key it finds - so be careful! e.g. if you have keys for BioEntity and SequenceFeature and Gene in your keys file, any of the three keys may be used to merge a Gene into the database.
It is still possible to use a legacy method of configuring keys, where keys are defined centrally in dbmodel/resources/genomic_keyDefs.properties and referenced in source $DATA-SOURCE-NAME_keys.properties files.
Global primary key configuration file [DEPRECATED]#
Warning This is an older method of defining keys in a central configuration file. Use the method described above instead.
Define keys in a central file [DEPRECATED]#
This file is a Java properties file, so all the data is in form of single lines of the form "property name = property value". A line is a comment if it begins with a hash character, and blank lines may be present. This file defines a set of primary keys by name for each class. Defining a primary key on a class makes it apply to all the subclasses too. This file should be located in MINE_NAME/dbmodel/resources.
To define a primary key, enter a line in the following form:
This line means that the class "Classname" and all its subclasses have a primary key called "primary_key_name" that matches two objects if the values of both of the fields "field1" and "field2" are identical. Only attributes and references can be used as fields in a primary key, not collections.
Here is a short example of the configuration file. The configuration file we use for the FlyMine system is a good example.
Using keys (from central file) in each source [DEPRECATED]#
The properties file for each data source lists primary key names from the the central genomic_keyDefs.properties file. The file lists the primary keys by name for each class; the primary key names must be defined in the global keyDefs file mentioned in the previous section. If a class is not mentioned, then instances of that class will never be merged with other objects. For each class, there should be a line like the following:
This line means that the class "Gene" and all its subclasses have a two primary keys available for this data source, called "key_identifier_org" and "key_symbol_org", which should be defined properly in the global configuration.
Warning This is an older method of defining keys in a central configuration file. Use the method described in the first section instead.