Directory as data source - basic guide

What is it?

Directory is a type of data source that can be used as a repository, where Data Discovery automatically creates data sources based on the CSV-files or Excel files that are placed in that folder.

How to create a Directory?

First of all you need to make a folder that Data Discovery users can access, where they can place their CSV files and Excel files.

An example could be this folder (currently with 2 excel files and 2 csv files):

Now we create a data source of the type Directory:

Note: You can tick Create Cubes for each file which will automatically create 1 cube per data source
(This is NOT recommended, since it can become hard to manage).

The setup above will create 4 data sources automatically - which will be in a special section of Data Sources in Data Discovery:

These data source can not be deleted individually from this folder - you can only delete the complete folder from the overview.

To remove 1 data source only - you need to remove the file from the (Windows) folder - then it will disappear from Data Discovery as well.

In all other aspects, these data sources are like all other data sources - you can use them in cubes or create formats, change data types etc.