Data Dictionary
Responsibilities for the administration of US property falls upon local governments, especially counties. These local governments usually make property data available as public records. In the absence of national standards, each local government can take its own approach as to what property data it makes available when it is made available, and in what format. Local governments typically collect data based on their own needs. As needs vary from one county to another this results in many inconsistencies in the data.
ATTOM plays an important role in the collection of a lot of this data, standardizing it into a consistent format before making it available as part of a national property database (ATTOM Cloud).
A data dictionary documents the standardized format adopted by ATTOM to represent national data for a specific dataset. It defines what fields are available, their format, and how they are referenced by various ATTOM products such as ATTOM Cloud and ATTOM API.
Note: ATTOM Cloud is a dynamic platform and new fields may get added from time to time. It would require exceptional circumstances for a column to be removed from a table/view as this has the potential to break your code. Changes to the tables/views should be reflected in the latest data dictionary.
Data Dictionary of Data Dictionary
The data dictionary usually contains the following attributes/columns for each field:
| Field | Description |
| Family | The family to which the dataset belongs (e.g. Property, Transaction, Valuation) |
| Dataset | The name of the dataset |
| Seq# | The order in which the field appears in the ATTOM Cloud table/view |
| Group | Logical groupings of the data can be helpful in understanding the structure of tables/views with a large number of fields. e.g. in addresses, we can group the fields based on them being part of the APN, coordinates, delivery (USPS) address and the legal description of a property. |
| ATTOM Cloud | The name of the field assigned in the ATTOM Cloud table/view. Note: It is our goal to adopt its name across all products to simplify working with multiple |
| Bulk | The name of the field assigned to the latest bulk file layout. A blank value usually means this field is not available in bulk products. |
| ATTOM API | The name assigned to the field in the ATTOM API, ATTOM's primary property API. A blank value indicates the field is not accessible via ATTOM API at this time. |
| Slipstream | The name assigned to the field in the Slipstream API. This API was part of ATTOM's acquisition of Home Junction and will eventually be replaced by ATTOM API. A blank value indicates the field is not accessible via ATTOM API. |
| Estated | The name assigned to the field in the Estate API. This API was part of ATTOM's acquisition of Estated and will eventually be replaced by ATTOM API. |
| Description | A brief description of the field. This description is usually available as part of the table/view schema and can be viewed within many SQL Editors. A more detailed description may be provided as part of a p-article written for that dataset |
| Data Type | The data type used to store values for this field |
| Size | For text data, the maximum size of the field. |
| Dimension Table | If the field represents a code of an object for which additional information is available, the name of the applicable dimension table |
| Dimension Table Key | If the field represents a code of an object for which additional information is available, the name of the field that is used to match this field's value in the applicable dimension table |
Layout
A separate worksheet is created for each table/view included as part of the dataset. The name of the worksheet corresponds to the name of the table or view.
Delivery Format
Excel
Data Dictionaries are typically provided as a Microsoft Excel workbook (xslx) as part of the Meta Data included with a solution pack. These can be downloaded and viewed locally on your computer. Using Excel it is possible to sort or filter on particular columns. The following example is the Addresses Data Dictionary delivered in an Excel format.
Addresses-Data-Dictionary.xlsx
SQL Editor
The SQL schema is documented in a way so st to expose as much of the data dictionary as possible. In particular, the descriptions for each column are included to make it more convenient for developers to identify the columns needed without needing to constantly refer to an external resource such as an Excel spreadsheet.
