Object resolution basics

Object resolution is the act of combining two or more Objects. For instance, it may be useful to resolve objects from two different Source Systems that refer to the same real-world entity, to prevent duplicate objects from being created.

When objects are resolved, their independent histories are preserved and updates to each of the sub-objects will be preserved in case objects ever need to be un-resolved later, eg, if an error in resolution was made. Additionally, properties written directly to the resolved object can later be partitioned to any of the constituents upon unresolve.

These concepts can be described and investigated by loading the resolution metadata, which has a few components

• A canonicalObjectPrimaryKey which is the primary key of the resolved object.
• A winnerObjectPrimaryKey, which is created internally when objects are resolved. New property writes for the resolved object will be associated with the winnerObjectPrimaryKey, so that on unresolve, they can be cleanly separated from the constituent objects.
• A list of otherObjectPrimaryKeys which are other objects that have been resolved into the bag.

In the case that objects are resolved recursively, all components of the constituent objects are flattened into this field, except for the objectPrimaryKey which becomes the canonicalObjectPrimaryKey of the newly-resolved object.

For example, if objects ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.111111 and ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.222222 are resolved, you will get resolution metadata of

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{
  "canonicalObjectPrimaryKey": ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.111111,
  "winnerObjectPrimaryKey": ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.333333,
  "otherObjectPrimaryKeys": [ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.222222]
}

If ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.111111 and ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.444444 are then resolved, you will get resolution metadata of

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{
  "canonicalObjectPrimaryKey": ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.111111,
  "winnerObjectPrimaryKey": ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.555555,
  "otherObjectPrimaryKeys": [
    ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.222222, 
    ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.333333, 
    ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.444444]
}

You may then unresolve ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.222222 from ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.111111, which will result in two objects, ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.111111 and ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.222222, with the following resolution metadata:

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[{
  "canonicalObjectPrimaryKey": ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.111111,
  "winnerObjectPrimaryKey": ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.555555,
  "otherObjectPrimaryKeys": [
    ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.333333, 
    ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.444444]
},
{
  "canonicalObjectPrimaryKey": ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.222222,
  "winnerObjectPrimaryKey": ri.gotham.111111-0.object-internal.222222,
  "otherObjectPrimaryKeys": []
}]