In order to link Assets to External Data you must have the appropriate license and customization Access Rights. As with all authoring functions, you must have permissions and work in a work order or standing task to link assets.

Assets in the asset database can be linked to external data if the data has attribute information that links the Asset to one ore more records in the external database. Consider the following example where the V-Suite CORE Asset Database contains Piping Line Assets and an external database contains relational database records. The link is established by specifying common values.


Link V-Suite CORE Piping Line Asset to External Data Row if the Asset’s ‘Tag’ equals the Data Row ‘LineNumber’

Linking an Asset to external data will provide the V-Suite CORE User the ability to view external values and perform queries on external values. Please note the following limitations:


Linkage

Description

View Linked Data

Query Linked Data

One to One

One Asset is linked to a single external data row

Supported

Supported

One to Many

One Asset is linked to a multiple external data rows

Supported

Supported

Many to one

Multiple Assets are linked to the same external data row

Supported

Not supported

Many to Many

Multiple Assets are linked to multiple external data rows

Supported

Not supported


GDA will in principal support any data source as long as an OLE DB Provider or ODBC driver is available.

In order to link an Asset to External Data you must first create an external data source. External data sources can be created via the External Data Source Manager. Once the external data source has been created you can add external attributes to the appropriate Asset Templates.

You cannot create External Data Sources or add external attributes to Asset Templates when multiple projects are opened.
You must open a single Project in order to customize External Data Sources and Asset Templates.