What is a table catalog?
A table catalog is a collection of mapped user tables. Table catalogs store all of the user table mapping metadata information for re-use across flowcharts. You can also map contact and response history tables in a table catalog for inclusion and exclusion rules.
Table catalogs are stored by default in a binary format using a .cat extension. They can also be saved as XML files.
You use table catalogs to:
- Easily save, load, and update commonly used user tables.
- Create alternative data mappings (for example, to switch between running against a sample database and the production database).
You can save mapped user tables to a table catalog, then use the same table catalog in other flowcharts. This means you can:
- Make changes to the table catalog in one flowchart, then propagate these changes to other flowcharts by importing the updated table catalog into each flowchart.
- Retain the internal catalog that you first loaded for that flowchart, although you copy it to other flowcharts and make changes there.
- Make different changes to the internal catalogs of a number of different flowcharts, starting from one "template" table catalog.