CREATE RECORD TYPE

Commands › Extracting entities from documents · Admins only, through sercha_define or a tenant file

Declares a record type in an ontology. Records are written by people and agents, not by extraction: a claim or a problem about an extracted instance, kept in an append-only ledger. A record type declares its columns in the same grammar as an entity.

Syntax

CREATE RECORD TYPE <ontology>.<Name> (
    <column> <type> [ <column option> ... ] [, ...]
    [, KEY ( <column> [, ...] ) ]
  )
  [ KIND { assertion | exception } ]
  [ ON ENTITY <Entity> ]

Parameters

Parameter	Description
<ontology>.<Name>	The ontology and the record type's name. Must be qualified.
<column>, <type>, <column option>	As in CREATE ENTITY (extraction): KEY, NOT NULL, CHECK ( col IN (...) ) and EXTRACT '<description>' mean the same. SENSITIVE is refused.
KIND assertion	The default. A positive claim about an instance: a value, a classification, a judgement. Its columns carry the claim.
KIND exception	Something is wrong or cannot be resolved about an instance. The record's existence is the fact; its columns describe it.
ON ENTITY <Entity>	The entity, in the same ontology, the records attach to. Unqualified. Without it, records may attach to any instance.

Usage notes

• KIND and ON ENTITY may come in either order.
• A record attaches to an instance by the entity's natural key; declare one first with ALTER ENTITY ... SET NATURAL KEY.
• Writing a record about a corpus needs both SELECT and ANNOTATE on it. See GRANT.

Examples

CREATE RECORD TYPE finance.PaymentCheck (
  checked_on DATE NOT NULL EXTRACT 'The date the payment was checked against the bank statement',
  outcome TEXT CHECK (outcome IN ('matched', 'short', 'missing')) EXTRACT 'What the check found'
) KIND assertion ON ENTITY Invoice;

result
record type "finance.PaymentCheck" created (kind=assertion, ontology=finance)

CREATE RECORD TYPE finance.DuplicateInvoice (
  other_invoice_no TEXT NOT NULL EXTRACT 'The invoice number this one duplicates'
) ON ENTITY Invoice KIND exception;

Not supported

-- Refused by the engine
CREATE RECORD TYPE PaymentCheck (outcome TEXT)

-- Refused by the engine
CREATE RECORD TYPE finance.PaymentCheck (outcome TEXT) KIND warning

See also

CREATE ONTOLOGY · ALTER ENTITY · GRANT · SHOW RECORDS