Domains, Standard Schema and Data Dictionary

OTM organises all of its data using a domain model. Understanding domains, the database schema, and how business objects are identified is foundational for anyone working with OTM data — whether you are building integrations, writing reports, or troubleshooting transactions.

Domains:

What is a domain? A domain is a logical grouping of OTM data for a business unit. A corporation with multiple shipping divisions — say, Merchandise and Food & Beverage — would typically have one domain per division. Users and roles are tied to a domain, so a user in one domain cannot see or modify data in another.
Domain hierarchy: Domains can be nested — a parent domain at the corporate level with child domains under each business unit. Configuration defined at the parent level (e.g. Item Numbers, Agents, Rate Offerings) is shared across all child domains, while each child domain can also maintain its own configuration.
DOMAIN_NAME column: Every table in OTM includes a DOMAIN_NAME column that ties each row to its domain. This is how OTM isolates data between business units within a single database instance.

GID and XID — How OTM Identifies Business Objects:

Every OTM business object has two identifier columns:

GID (Global ID): The system-level unique identifier, formatted as DOMAIN_NAME.XID. For example, a purchase order in domain ABC with PO number 12345 has ORDER_BASE_GID = ABC.12345. GID is the primary key used in foreign key relationships across tables.
XID (External ID): The business-facing identifier — just the 12345 part, without the domain prefix. This is what business users recognise. In most implementations, the XID matches the source system's reference number.

Standard OTM Database Schemas:

GLOGOWNER: The main transactional schema. All OTM business data lives here — Purchase Orders (ORDER_BASE), Order Releases (ORDER_RELEASE), Shipments (SHIPMENT), Locations (LOCATION), Rates, Invoices, and more.
REPORTOWNER: Stores report definitions, BI Publisher query templates, and Oracle stored procedures used for reporting. Objects created in this schema need a public synonym so the OTM application can access them.

OTM Data Dictionary:

The Data Dictionary is built into OTM and documents every table and column in the GLOGOWNER schema — including primary keys, foreign keys, and field descriptions. To access it, add html/data_dict to your OTM URL after GC3:

https://<your-otm-host>/GC3/html/data_dict/

OTM Data Dictionary showing SHIP_UNIT_LINE table with primary key and foreign key annotations

Note: Columns marked with * are part of the primary key. The value in brackets next to a column shows the foreign key reference — for example, SHIP_UNIT_LINE.SHIP_UNIT_GID references SHIP_UNIT.SHIP_UNIT_GID.

What’s Next:

The next topic covers the Order Management Data Structure — how OTM organises purchase orders and order releases in the database, and how they relate to shipments.

Next Topic: Order Management Data Structure

Questions & Discussion

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