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Data Normalization

Jitterbit can transform a flat text or database to a hierarchical target. This type of transformation requires an extra step before transformation to convert from a flat to a hierarchical source. This extra step is necessary so that the source can be normalized.

The structure of the hierarchical source is similar to the target structure. From the target structure, the root element and all of the multiple-instance elements under the root are used to create the structure of the secondary source elements. The attributes (or fields) of these secondary source element are the flat data elements that are used in the mappings of the corresponding target element.

With the source structure defined, the normalization process is reduced to combining nodes with the same parents.

There are three options for normalization:

  1. Complete normalization: All the elements with the same parent and all the fields are reduced to one element. (This is the default.)
  2. Partial normalization: The same as above, except the lowest children.
  3. No normalization: Each flat record creates a branch of elements; no reduction of elements are done when creating hierarchical source.

It is possible for the hierarchical structure to contain a single instance node. In this case we will only keep the first element for this root and the flat records that have conflict with this root data node will be ignored.