Caseflow Data Models #

This section provides information about Caseflow’s data model, data dictionary, and resources to help understand Caseflow’s database contents ( terminology and example data-dictionaries). The main audience are Caseflow engineers, BVA’s Reporting Team, and onboarders.

Also check out Caseflow Database Schema Documentation.

Contents #

Instructions for adding documentation #

Document any non-obvious semantics or logic that would be useful when interpreting database tables and constituent data.
- Reference other relevant wiki pages to provide context/background.
- Link to relevant code (in case it changes in the future).
To create tables diagram, go to http://dbdiagram.io/, click “Import”, and paste table definition excerpts from schema.rb; then add cross-table links using the mouse and move the boxes around to your liking. Click “Save” and copy the URL to this page.
- Note: you can only import once; try it a couple of times to get a hang of it before spending too much time.
- Table columns with *** in the name are used to designate categories of columns. In the Certifications diagram, you will see a column titled _initial *** in the Form8s table. The Form8s table has twelve columns beginning with “_initial”: _initial_appellant_name, _initial_appellant_relationship, etc. To keep the diagram and tables more tidy we grouped these categories together.
- Pro-tip: Open another browser tab, paste the new excerpt, then copy-and-paste the resulting Table definition into the original tab.
- To insert a screenshot of the diagram, paste the image into a comment on ticket #15510, which will upload the image to GitHub and provide a URL for the image, which can then be linked from this page.