A Compass Object is a table or view the AI has built in the client database and registered with a name, a description, and per-column documentation. Unlike a finding, which captures one query result, an object is durable data that outlives the session that produced it.
Creating an Object
Objects are created only by the AI, using the CREATE_COMPASS_OBJECT tool during a session, and only when a user has explicitly asked for one. There is no way to create an object by hand from the Objects screen. The tool is not mandatory, so it must be enabled on the diagnostic or diagnostic definition first.
The AI supplies metadata such as name, description, primary-key, and field descriptions along with the SQL, which must target the compass schema, which by convention is the only schema the restricted Compass database credential can create anything.
Column Metadata
The recorded column metadata comes from the database, not the AI. Once the object exists, its real columns and data types are read back by introspection, and the AI's field descriptions are laid on top of that, so field descriptions can be sparse. The finished metadata is returned to the AI and stored on the Compass Object.
The Primary Key
Every object declares a primary key: the columns that together identify one row. It is how the object states its grain — one row per patient, or per patient per month, or per claim line — which is the first thing anyone needs to know before joining to it and the one thing column descriptions alone never make clear.
Objects List and Detail
Objects in the sidebar lists every registered object with its table name, type, owner, when it was created, and when its data was last built, searchable by name, description, table name, or owner. Data As Of is when a table's data was last built — either by the AI when it created the object or by the most recent rebuild. Views have no Data As Of, because a view holds no data of its own.
Edit on the detail page opens the name, the description, and each column's label and description for editing. The SQL, the table name, the object type, the primary key, and each column's name and data type are fixed — they describe what is actually in the database and cannot be changed from here. To change the query itself, ask the AI to build a new object; to bring an existing object's data up to date, rebuild it.
An object's documentation is also available to the AI during a session: asking GET_OBJECT_METADATA for its table name returns the name, the description, the primary key, and every column with its label and description, exactly as the tool does for any other table in the data model.
Previewing the Data
Preview at the bottom of the detail page shows the first fifty rows of the object. Nothing is read until the button is pressed, and what comes back is the data as it stands in the database right now — for a view, that is the query run fresh; for a table, the contents as of its last build.
Rebuilding an Object
A table's data is a snapshot of what the query returned the day the AI built it. Rebuild on the detail page re-runs that same query and replaces the table's contents, and stamps the object with a new Data As Of date.
Rebuild appears only for tables. A view has nothing to refresh — it holds no data of its own, its query is fixed, and its comments are already kept in step by editing.
The columns are whatever the query returns now. Columns that survive keep their labels and descriptions, a column that has appeared gets a humanized label, and one that has gone away takes its documentation with it. A rebuild can take a while on a large query; it runs over the page's live connection, so the progress is shown as it goes and there is no time limit on it.
Deleting an Object
Delete on the detail page drops the underlying table or view from the database as well as removing the object from the list. This cannot be undone. If the drop fails, nothing is removed and the database's error is shown.
Access Control
- Compass Authors (and above) can view, preview, edit, rebuild, and delete objects.
- There is no sharing: every Compass Author sees every object, regardless of who created it.