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Export and import entity and choice set schemas in Data Fabric / Data Service to support application lifecycle management across development, testing, and production.
Overview
A schema represents the metadata of every entity and choice set, holding information such as entity fields data type or relationships between entity fields.
By exporting and importing schema, you are able to implement the best practices of an application lifecycle management—development, testing, deployment—considering capabilities such as copying schema between tenants and folders, or tracking schema changes through a source control tool of your choice.
Exporting schema downloads a JSON file containing the entity metadata on your local machine. You may share the file to be imported by different developers into their tenants or folders, and you yourself can import schemas developed by the community.
Cloning entities across scopes
You can use export and import to clone a native entity schema from one scope to another. For example, export a tenant-level entity and import it into a folder to create a folder-scoped copy with the same schema. Only the schema is cloned — no data is copied. The imported entity is independent of the original and can be modified separately.
This is useful when you want to reuse an existing entity design in a folder for use with Solutions, without recreating the schema manually.
Permissions
The following administrative permissions must be set for users to export and import schema:
| Operation | Permission |
|---|---|
| Export schema | View Schema |
| Import schema | Customize Schema View Schema |
To find out how to set the required permissions, check out the Managing Access page.
Exporting schema
- Only users with adequate permissions can export the schema.
- All native entities present in the tenant are exported.
- System-built entities and the corresponding system fields are excluded from exporting.
To export schema:
- Navigate to the desired tenant in Data Fabric / Data Service.
- Select Import/Export.
- Select Export Schema. A pop-up message prompts you to confirm the export.
- Select Confirm to trigger the export. A
.JSONfile containing the schema is downloaded to your machine.
Importing schema
- Only users with adequate permissions can import the schema.
- The imported schema file must be:
- valid
- in JSON format
- less than 30MB
- The Created by and Modified by fields of the imported schema are populated with the user that performed the import.
- The creation and last modified time fields are populated with the timestamp of the import.
- Once started, the importing process cannot be stopped.
To import a schema:
- Navigate to the desired tenant or folder in Data Fabric / Data Service.
- Select Import/Export.
- Select Import Schema.
- Select the destination location (tenant or folder) for the import.
- Browse for the schema file and select it.
Note:
The schema file must be in JSON format and valid. If you are generating schema files through coding agents, verify that the field types match the expected Data Fabric types, as incorrect types can cause unexpected behavior.
- Select the entities and choice sets you want to import.
- If no duplicate is detected, the selected entities are imported in the selected destination. In case of duplicates, the Entities Import window is displayed, allowing you to either append duplicate fields to existing entities or to not import the duplicates.
Handling duplicates
The process of importing a schema compares the existing entities, fields, or choice sets in the selected destination to those in the imported schema.
For each identified duplicate in the imported schema, the following options are displayed:
Append to existing (default option)
- Entity fields and choice sets that do not exist in the selected destination are imported.
- Entities containing fields and choice sets with different properties (such as name or data type) are skipped from importing.
Do not import
- The entity does not get imported to the selected destination.