ThoughtSpot objects

Table of Contents

Object model hierarchy
Object identifiers
Data modeling
Content creation
Access control (sharing)
Object properties in REST API
Object names in REST API v1
Related resources

ThoughtSpot is a business intelligence and data analytics platform for exploring, analyzing, and sharing real-time business analytics and interactive insights. Besides being an interactive data analytics platform, ThoughtSpot provides robust, guided search functionality that business users can use to search data instantly. ThoughtSpot is different from other BI tools because ThoughtSpot Search is the core of the ThoughtSpot system.

Review this page to understand how ThoughtSpot’s architecture differs from other BI tools before proceeding with the developer documentation.

Object model hierarchy🔗

The following figure illustrates the object model hierarchy in ThoughtSpot within a single Org:

Object identifiers🔗

Every object in ThoughtSpot has a globally unique ID (GUID), visible in URLs and in REST API responses as the id or metadata_id property. GUIDs are unique within a ThoughtSpot instance and thus cannot repeat in different Orgs.

Objects have an additional obj_id property that is user-settable and unique per Org. It appears as metadata_obj_id in responses from the /metadata/search REST API.

Each Org can have one object with a particular obj_id. The combination of org_id + obj_id is unique per instance, so it is equivalent to the object’s GUID.

obj_id enables TML export and import across Orgs and instances, allowing ThoughtSpot to automatically determine the object’s GUID without manual GUID mapping.

Supported object types🔗

Currently, obj_id is supported for the following object types:

Answers
Data Model
Logical Tables
Liveboards
Visualizations
Collections
Personalized Views

obj_id format and constraints🔗

obj_id values must meet the following requirements:

Constraint Requirement

Constraint	Requirement
Allowed characters	Lowercase alphanumeric, dots, and hyphens: `[a-z0-9.-]`
Casing	Strictly lowercase
Maximum length	64 characters
GUID exclusion	Must not match a standard GUID format to prevent ambiguity

Allowed characters

Lowercase alphanumeric, dots, and hyphens: [a-z0-9.-]

Casing

Strictly lowercase

Maximum length

64 characters

GUID exclusion

Must not match a standard GUID format to prevent ambiguity

Valid examples: sales.pipeline.v1, finance-ledger-prod, ingestion-worker-01

obj_id resolution🔗

When an identifier is passed to a REST API endpoint that accepts an object_identifier, ThoughtSpot resolves it in the following order:

obj_id (user-defined identifier)
GUID
Name

This resolution order enables obj_id to be used anywhere a GUID or name is accepted in the REST API v2.0 endpoints that support the object_identifier field. Backward compatibility with existing GUID-based and name-based integrations is fully maintained.

Note	`obj_id` resolution is scoped to the Org. An `obj_id` value is unique within a single Org. The `org_id` + `obj_id` combination uniquely identifies an object across the entire ThoughtSpot instance.

Setting and updating obj_id🔗

obj_id values can be set or updated using the following REST API endpoints:

POST /api/rest/2.0/metadata/update-obj-id
Updates the obj_id for one or more metadata objects. Accepts the object’s GUID (metadata_identifier) or its current obj_id (current_obj_id).

{
  "metadata": [
    {
      "metadata_identifier": "c1e4043a-4524-4fcb-a20f-9e7aff4dc972",
      "new_obj_id": "sales-pipeline-v1"
    }
  ]
}

Or, using the current obj_id:

{
  "metadata": [
    {
      "current_obj_id": "sales-pipeline-v1-c1e4043a",
      "new_obj_id": "sales-pipeline-v1"
    }
  ]
}

The request accepts an array, allowing multiple objects to be updated in a single API call.

Note

Objects are assigned an automatic obj_id after the first change to the object once the feature is enabled on your instance. The auto-generated format appends the first segment of the GUID: for example, RetailSalesRAD-KPIs-c1e4043a. If the metadata_obj_id property in the /metadata/search response is null, the object has not been updated since the feature was enabled.

For information about using obj_id in CI/CD workflows, see Deploy with TML APIs and Development and deployment.

Data modeling🔗

A data model requires at least one connection and one Table to use Search data to create content. Most often, there will be multiple Tables with a variety of joins defined in ThoughtSpot, and a Model that brings those tables together into a presentable analytics model for end users.

Data engineers with the Can manage data privilege can add connections either in the UI or via REST API. Connections are owned and accessible only to their creator, who then imports Tables from the connection. Once imported, tables can be shared with other ThoughtSpot groups and users.

Tables can have Row Level Security (RLS) rules that filter the data results based on the signed-in username or the ThoughtSpot groups to which the user belongs, and those rules apply to any Model that uses the Table.

Note	Worksheets are deprecated and replaced with Models in ThoughtSpot Cloud 10.12.0.cl and later versions.

Data modeling workflow🔗

Create a connection to a cloud data warehouse.
Import tables from the connection.
Create Models (analytic data models) based on tables.
Create ThoughtSpot Views or SQL Views as necessary.

ThoughtSpot also supports programmatic deployment of data models via ThoughtSpot Modeling Language (TML) and table import from dbt.

Content creation🔗

ThoughtSpot Search data creates a table or chart view based on the query in the search bar and any additional view configuration applied after the search results are displayed.

Search data serves the role of report builder or widget designer, while Liveboards serve the role of dashboards in other tools. A single search can be saved as a Answer object, or the search result can be pinned to a Liveboard.

A Liveboard is a collection of visualizations in a defined layout. Visualizations are created from search data results and pinned to a Liveboard; they cannot be created directly within the Liveboard. New Liveboards can be created from the Liveboards page and visualizations from search data results added to them, or new Liveboards can be created when pinning an Answer retrieved from search data.

Content creation workflow🔗

To create content:

Use the Search data functionality to build visualizations from data sources such as Models or Views.
Save the search result as an Answer or pin it to a Liveboard as a visualization.

Visualizations on a Liveboard🔗

Any number of visualizations from search results can be added to a Liveboard object. Pinned visualizations exist only within the Liveboard and are independent of objects saved as Answers.

Each time a search result is pinned, a separate new visualization is created on the Liveboard.

To edit a visualization on a Liveboard:

Go to the Liveboard.
Navigate to the visualization.
Click the More menu and select Edit.

Visualizations on a Liveboard have their own GUIDs, but the visualization objects do not exist separately from the Liveboard object.

Tags🔗

Tags allow you to organize your objects and find them easily.

A tag object is created by the administrator, is visible to all users, and can be assigned by any user.

Tag search is always an OR operation: filtering on multiple tags results in all objects with any of the tags, not just those with all of the specified tags.

Access control (sharing)🔗

ThoughtSpot’s access control model works by having an author or administrator share objects with ThoughtSpot groups or individual users:

The creator of an object is referred to as the author.
The author can share the object with their groups using the Shareable property.
The author can share the object with other users in Shareable groups that the author belongs to, and if the other user is also marked Shareable.

An administrator can share any object with any group or user without restrictions. ThoughtSpot administrators can add users locally in the UI or via REST API. Similarly, they can manage groups and sharing privileges by using the Groups feature in the UI or via REST API.

Single sign-on🔗

If SAML or OpenID Connect (OIDC) integration is enabled on your instance, users who authenticate with external identity providers (IdP) can log in to ThoughtSpot with their Single Sign-On credentials. Embedded ThoughtSpot instances also support the trusted authentication method to sign in application users.

Object properties in REST API🔗

Object representations in the ThoughtSpot REST API include the following properties:

id
GUID of the object. Unique within a given ThoughtSpot instance.
obj_id
User-defined string identifier for the object. Unique within a given Org.
author
GUID of the user who created / uploaded the object, or had the object transferred to them.
owner
GUID representing the relationship between hierarchical objects. For example, a column would have the GUID of a Table or Model as owner.
created
Timestamp of object creation.
modified
Timestamp of the last time the object was modified.
modifiedBy
GUID of the user who last modified the object.
tags
Array of tag objects representing the tags assigned to the object.

Object names in REST API v1🔗

Object type names in ThoughtSpot REST API v1 differ from the current names shown in the ThoughtSpot UI. Data objects have both a type and a subtypes field in the REST API, allowing you to request all valid data objects or specify an individual subtype.

The following notation is used in REST API v1 for object types:

Answers: QUESTION_ANSWER_BOOK
Liveboards: PINBOARD_ANSWER_BOOK
Connections: DATA_SOURCE
Data objects: LOGICAL_TABLE, with the following subtypes:
- Tables: ONE_TO_ONE_LOGICAL
- Models: WORKSHEET
- Views: AGGR_WORKSHEET
- SQL views: SQL_VIEW
- CSV imported data: USER_DEFINED
Joins: LOGICAL_RELATIONSHIP
Columns: LOGICAL_COLUMN
Tags: TAG
Users: USER
Groups: USER_GROUP

Column and join objects with their own GUIDs do exist within the ThoughtSpot system, but they are connected to Tables, Models, or other data objects. Columns and joins can be viewed or modified only within the context of the data object to which they belong.

Related resources🔗

ThoughtSpot product documentation