About the GIS Data Loader General Loading Strategy

The imported data must load in a specific sequence to successfully populate fields, create records, and link data to the predecessor and successor records.

Best Practices

When importing data using the GIS Data Loader, you must use the following best practices:

To populate a record, use the ENTITY_KEY.
To search for an ENTITY_KEY, use the ENTITY_ID value.
To search for an ENTITY_KEY if ENTITY_ID is not provided, use the FAMILY_ID, ID_FIELD, and ID values together.
To create a new record, the referenced Entity Key should not have a corresponding record in the target table and provide the geospatial data.
To update a record, the referenced Entity Key should have a corresponding record in the target table, and to update new information, provide the new geospatial data.
To delete an existing record, the Entity Key referenced should have corresponding record in the target table, and do not provide the geospatial data (the cell should be empty).
Geospatial data in the GEOD_DATA column should conform to the geometry spatial data type.
All columns in the worksheets must be formatted as Text or Entity Key. Entity Keys should be formatted as Numbers.

Load Sequence

When importing data using the data loader workbook, you must use the following workflow:

Download the data loader workbook provided by GE Digital
Identify the data requirements for exporting the data into the data loader workbook.
Extract data from legacy applications to populate the data loader workbook.
Provide batch numbers in the Batch worksheet and in the first column of the remaining worksheets in the data loader workbook.
Import data into GE Digital APM.
Monitor the status of the data load, and verify the results in the log.
Conduct tests in GE Digital APM to ensure that the imported data loaded accurately.

For each row in the data loader workbook, the GIS Data Loader creates a new record in GE Digital APM. However, if records have already been created and you import the data, the existing records will be updated.