Data becomes empty in Global Search after name of an attribute is changed

Keywords: Signals Inventa, SIV, Global Search, attribute

Problem:

Data becomes empty in Global Search after name of an Attribute is changed from Information Design.

Consider the following operation:

1. Go to Information Design > Edit Attribute.
2. Change the name of an Attribute from IC50 to IC50_nM

The change is reflected in Measurement Type. However, the table retrieved using Global Search has empty data for IC50_nM.

Resolution:

The user needs to perform the following additional steps after changing the name of an attribute.

When you update the attribute name, it does change the name in the Measurement type, but it doesn’t update the maps. If there are 3 measurement types and all of them have an attribute called “IC50”, user can change the attribute name and all 3 measurement types will be auto-updated to reflect the new attribute name (eg: “IC50_in nanomolar”). The new name will also be displayed in the Global search. This is great for the use case of setting up a new system and designing your data schema.

But, changing the attribute name does not automatically update the existing maps. If you look at the Advanced Mapping interface in SDF you would find something like:

Where “Column A” in my data file maps to the attribute “IC50”.

You can fix this by updating the map.  If there are only a handful of changes to make, you could go into SDF > Projects > Select Map > Advanced Mode and manually make the change (as below).  Once I reload the data in SDF the new map will take effect and the values should appear in the measurement table downloaded from global search.   Please note that if you have multiple maps that reference the old attribute name, you’ll need to update all of them. 

Be aware that you may also need to manually update the “Publish Endpoints” map if any of the endpoints or other fields reference the new attribute name.