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Entropy Data

Source Systems

Source systems are the operational origins of your domain data — the databases, applications, event streams, and files a data product is built from. Registering them documents where data comes from and lets you trace lineage from a data product back to its sources.

A source system is owned by a team.

Source systems are a legacy feature. Linking a source system to a data product as an input port belongs to the deprecated Data Product Specification (DPS). For new data products, use declared input ports with a data contract. See Migrate to declared input ports.

Add a source system

  1. In the Studio, open Source Systems and click Add.
  2. Enter a name. The external ID is derived from it and identifies the source system in the API and in YAML — you can override it.
  3. Choose the owning team.
  4. Optionally add a description, tags, links (to the system itself, its runbook, or a dashboard), and custom fields.
  5. Click Save.

Source system input ports (legacy)

Source system input ports come from the Data Product Specification (DPS). DPS is deprecated and will be removed at the end of 2026. Source system input ports are a legacy feature. Do not use them for new data products.

Existing source system input ports continue to show in the Input Ports section of a data product. In the ODPS YAML, a source system input port is an entry in the inputPorts array with a sourceSystemId custom property.

Migrate to declared input ports

For new and migrated data products, use declared input ports with a data contract instead. A data contract that no output port publishes describes an external or ingested source, such as an operational database or an event stream.

  1. If the data product still uses DPS, open it and click Migrate to ODPS. This change cannot be reversed. To test the result first, clone the data product and migrate the clone. See Migrating from Data Product Specification to Open Data Product Standard.
  2. In the Studio, open the data product and click Add Input Port.
  3. Connect a data contract that describes the source data, or select Create a new data contract to write one. See Add an input port.
  4. Open the old source system input port, click Edit, and delete it.

If you do not want to use a data contract to define the input data in detail, it is also possible to declare a source system with a data product of type "Application" and link that data product via Access Request Input Port to your source-aligned data product.