One of Ellie’s founding principles is re-usability: model an asset once, apply it everywhere. In 8.0 we’re extending that super-power from the conceptual layer to logical models, so your core business entities stay consistent as they move down the stack.

Check out our video for the feature lets you do in your Ellie environment:

Why this matters

• Consistency across domains – a single, governed definition of “Customer”, “Invoice” or “Campaign” flows through every logical model instead of being rebuilt (and re-argued) project-by-project.
  
  
• Faster modelling – drag an existing glossary entity--complete with attributes, metadata onto any canvas in seconds.
  
  
• Zero-touch updates – tweak the entity once; Ellie automatically propagates the change to every model that references it.
  
  
• Governance built-in – ownership, version history and permissions travel with the entity, keeping your data even as your modeling library scales.

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A “Logical” Step Post Ellie 7.0 Release

Last year with the Ellie 7.0 release we introduced folders, subglossaries and reusable conceptual entities across folders. Customers loved this functionality, but also wanted us to expand it to other levels of modeling. We listened, and as the first step of this ongoing reusability theme across Ellie, we are bringing reusability to the logical canvas.

Overall the functionality is very similar, with the main difference being that logical entities can also be local to a model.

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Three flavours of logical entity

Logical entities can be of three types: Local, Glossary and Foreign Glossary.

Local – Perfect for quick drafts or one-off entities that live only inside the current model. Ellie marks them with a small “L” badge so you know they’re scoped locally.

Glossary – When an entity becomes canonical, promote it to the glossary with a single click. From then on, every modeller can drag that shared definition into their work. Glossary entities appear with normal box styling.

Foreign glossary – Need to reference an entity defined in a different glossary (say the company-wide “Organization” glossary)? Ellie lets you do that, displaying the entity name in italics and revealing its full path on hover.

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Typical workflow: Start local ➜ promote to glossary when an entity graduates to “company-wide” status. It’s a lightweight governance workflow that lets teams move fast and stay aligned.

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Logical Glossary

Just like conceptual, glossary logical entities can always be found in the Folder assets. Glossary entities and support similar functionality that you’d find in your conceptual glossary entities. Including:

• Unique Links
• Single Entity Page with Metadata and Attribute tabs
• Versioning
• Ability to Copy / Move / Delete entity from the glossary
• Ability to be found in Quick and Advanced Search

Note: The release also enables Entity types for glossary logical entities, this feature will be further enabled in the modeling canvases in a future release.

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Custom attributes

Ellie 8.0 unifies entity-settings across conceptual, logical and physical layers. Any custom attribute field you create (SLA, PII flag, etc.) now shows up automatically also on logical glossary entities. We’ve also added a few bonus attribute fields out-of-the-box to give you more room for lineage, quality notes, etc as we unify our attributes across levels.

Note: This feature will be streamlined even further with our upcoming reusable physical entities release.

Sneak-peek at what’s coming next

As we continue with our reusability improvements, the following functionality will be available in the coming releases:

• Logical Entity Custom Metadata - ability to add custom metadata fields to logical glossary entities in the Admin settings.
• Metadata and Attribute Field Visibility - define which metadata and attribute fields are visible on a certain level glossary entities (conceptual / logical / physical).
• Reusable physical entities - the same re-usability coming to the physical layer (entities) next.

Stay tuned for updates on these features!

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Try Reusable Logical Entities today

1. Open or create a logical model.
   
   
2. Add entities just like before and type the entity you’d like to create – they’ll start as Local.
   
   
3. Right-click ➜ “Add to Glossary” whenever you’re ready to promote.
   
   
4. Search glossary entities into any other model to reuse them instantly.

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Changes brought by the release

As part of the release we are unifying the core attribute fields across levels. As such, the following changes are coming to all the ellie environments.

• Any custom attribute fields you’ve added to your conceptual entities, such as a “Critical Data Element” field, will also be available in reusable logical entities (for now, only in the single entity view). 
• The “Format” attribute field in conceptual entities will be renamed to “Data Type” to better reflect its purpose.

Need help or have ideas? Drop us a note at support@ellie.ai – we build Ellie together with our customers, and your feedback helps us build the roadmap.

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