Configuring ADE

When setting up Agile Data Engine, it is important to define a set of conventions that guide how the platform will be used within your organization. These conventions include, for example, naming standards, entity types, metadata attributes, attribute data types and load patterns.

These conventions are implemented in ADE through configuration packages. This configuration allows you to apply your organization’s standards consistently across use cases and environments.

Role of configuration packages

Configuration packages are the primary method for customizing and managing platform-level settings in Agile Data Engine. Configuration packages are handled just like entity packages: they are committed and deployed across environments. Configuration packages also enable sharing configurations between tenants.

ADE comes with pre-configured default configurations. You can find the latest versions in this GitHub repository.

Configurations to check when starting with ADE

Enforcing naming conventions and default attributes

To define tenant-specific naming conventions and desired default attributes, modify the contents of CONFIG_ENTITY_DEFAULTS package. See also user guide for customizing default attributes.

Here are some examples of naming conventions and default attributes:

• Staging table names should have prefix STG_.

• Dimension and Fact table names should have prefixes D_ & F_.

• Data Vault Hub, Link and Satellite table names should have prefixes H_, L_, S_.

• Data Vault tables should have default attributes dv_id, dv_load_time and dv_source_system.

Enforcing naming conventions and default attributes helps ensure consistency across solutions built with Agile Data Engine. This is especially important in multi-developer or multi-team environments, where shared standards reduce confusion, support maintainability, and enable smoother collaboration.

Customizing default transformations

To define tenant-specific load transformations, such as applying custom transformation logic to source entity attributes or e.g. custom hash key logic, use the CONFIG_LOAD_TRANSFORMATIONS configuration package.

ADE comes with pre-defined transformation types but they can be modified and new transformation types can be added according to your needs.

Transformation formulas:

• Can be hidden from the Designer if not needed

• Produce DBMS-product-specific SQL code

• Transformation formulas are defined with Apache FreeMarker syntax

How transformation formulas work:

• In the entity mapping view, transformation types can be chosen from a drop-down menu.

• It is possible to set transformation formulas as default, for example, when mapping attributes from source entity to target entity.

See examples in GitHub, CONFIG_LOAD_TRANSFORMATIONS and the Data Warehouse modeling guide to get started with customizing transformations.