Dictionary

In ProcessMIX, Dictionary is a tabular data set (a spreadsheet) used for storing lookup information, which you can create directly in your project for easy access and maintenance. Columns in a ProcessMIX dictionary have data types, so that they can be used for structured information storage and retrieval - an essential requirement in automated data processing.

When a dictionary is created, a corresponding backing data structure is also automatically defined in the same project, which contains a separate property for each table column,. This way dictionary entries can be accessed programmatically from flows in a standard fashion, as any other processed data.

When you edit dictionary parameter names and values, the backing data structure is automatically updated as well, in order to keep it in sync with the dictionary settings.

There are two types of dictionaries in ProcessMIX:

• Custom dictionary—a general-purpose lookup table, which you can use for information retrieval by adding a corresponding node in a flow.

• Reason code dictionary—a specialized lookup list for providing explanatory reason codes and descriptions when calculating predictive scores with the help of scorecard assets.

The type is specified via a configuration property in the dictionary builder.

Custom Dictionary

Custom dictionaries can have any number of columns, but they must be of simple data types: String, Integer, Float, Boolean, or Date.

For example, you could define a custom dictionary to store a list of country codes, names and their currency codes:

Name: CountryList
countryCode (String)     countryName (String)    currencyCode (String)
971                      Afganistan              AFN
008                      Albania                 ALL
012                      Algeria                 DZD 
...

Then you can add a reference to it as a node to your flow and be able to retrieve a full or filtered list of country records to use in the rest of the flow as you wish.

It is advised not to edit the backing data structure directly, using the parameter settings in the dictionary builder itself. If you need to open and edit the data structure directly, it is important that you only use properties with simple data types, such as String, Date, Integer, Float, Boolean, from the backing data structure when selecting parameters for each column in the dictionary. Otherwise, you will see an error when you try to select such property as a column type.

Reason Code Dictionary

This dictionary type is used as a supporting tool when developing scorecards. It helps to produce a human- and machine-readable explanation of the reasons why a particular score was calculated by the model.

It is restricted in a sense that it needs have few standard columns, which are automatically added as properties to the auto-generated backing data structure:

• Rank (Integer)

• Name (String)

• Code (Integer)

• Message (String)

Additional custom properties/columns can also be added, but the above mentioned ones are required for the proper scorecard implementation.

You can learn more about creating and editing dictionaries in the Dictionary Builder section.