The things, or objects, stored in the Macrobond database are called entities. The most common type of entity is the Time series. Some other types are Region, Release, Source, Index and Security. All entities has a unique name.
All entities have some metadata that describes the entity. The metadata comes as a set of metadata attributes.
There are different types of attributes. Some can take only values from a list of defined values. There are different data type such as string, timestamp, boolean and integer. All entities can also function as meta data and in that case the value is the name of the references entity. An example of this is Region.
Given the name of an attribute, you can use the Macrobond API to get more details.
Some metadata attributes are used just for descriptive purposes, to form series titles and to organize them, and these are prone to change as the organization of the database is changed.
Other metadata is used to describe properties of the time series. Below follows a list of the most common and useful metadata attributes.
| Class | Indicates whether a series is a Flow, a Step or a Stock. It determines how the automatic frequency conversion in Macrobond behaves. If the series is a Flow, the data will be aggregated when converted to a lower frequency and distributed over the periods when converted to a higher frequency. |
| Currency | The currency code based on the three letter ISO 4217 codes. A list of the supported currencies is available on the Currencies List. (https://www.macrobond.com/currency-list/) |
| DisplayUnit | Used internally for in-house series. The unit of the time series. Typically displayed in axis labels in charts. |
| Database | Provides the name of the database this series. For series in the Macrobond database, this is "Macrobond". |
| EntityState | Tells if a series is active or discontinued. |
| EntityType | Provides the type of the entity, where the most common type is TimeSeries. |
| ForecastCutoffDate | All observations at this date and onwards will be flagged as forecasts. The date must not be before the start or after the end of the series. |
| FullDescription | Used for in-house series. Allows you to create a specific description of a series instead of relying on standard title generation. |
| IHCategory | This is a free-text property indicating the category for an in-house series. It can be set when uploading series. It's used together with Region to group series in the Macrobond application when browsing the in-house database. |
| IHInfo | This is an optional comment for in-house series. It can be set when uploading series and can be seen in the Series information report in the Macrobond application. |
| LastModifiedTimeStamp | Indicates the time when this entity was last modified. For time series, this includes changes in either values or metadata. |
| LastReleaseEventTime | Available for entities of type Release. It indicates the date and time of the last scheduled update. |
| MaturityDate | Some analyses, such as the Yield Curve Analysis, can use this information to automatically configure the maturity length. If you set MaturityDate, you should also set RateMethod. It's mutually exclusive with the MaturityDays attribute. |
| MaturityDays | This attribute is a positive integer that some analyses, such as the Yield Curve Analysis, can use to automatically configure the maturity length. If you set MaturityDays, you should also set RateMethod. It's mutually exclusive with the MaturityDate attribute. One week is 7 days, one month is 30 days and one year is 360 days. |
| NextReleaseEventTime | Available for entities of type Release. It indicates the date and time of the next scheduled update. |
| OriginalCurrency | The currency of a series before any transformations or calculations. This is set when you have requested the series using a unified series request, which can involve automatic currency conversion. |
| OriginalEndDate | The end date of a series before any transformations or calculations. This is set when you have requested the series using a unified series request, which can involve transformations like frequency conversion. |
| OriginalFrequency | The frequency of a series before any transformations or calculations. This is set when you have requested the series using a unified series request, which can involve transformations like frequency conversion. |
| OriginalStartDate | The start date of a series before any transformations or calculations. This is set when you have requested the series using a unified series request, which can involve transformations like frequency conversion. |
| RateMethod | Distinguishes between simple and effective rates. Some analyses, such as the Yield Curve Analysis, can use this information for automatic configuration. If you set this property, you should also set either MaturityDate or MaturityLength. |
| Region | The region code based on the two letter ISO 3166 codes. A list of the supported regions is available on the Region List (https://www.macrobond.com/region-list/). |
| RegionKey | This attribute associates a series with a concept such as gdp_total. These concepts are identified by Macrobond and are used to find a series representing a concept for a region. There can only be one series per region for each type of concept.
In the Macrobond application, all series you find the the Concept & Category tree have the RegionKey attribute. You can inspect series to see if they have RegionKey attribute identifying a concept and then use this to search for the corresponding series for other regions. There are examples how to do this in the API documentation. |
| Release | On a Time series, you can often find the Release metadata attribute containing the name of the release entity. The release entity, in turn, often has the Last/NextReleaseEventTime attributes. |
| Source | The source of the time series. |