Discover an application

Discovery operation connects to an application’s reference connectors and retrieves source metadata, including tables, columns, and relationships. It then automatically assigns generators to each field. This process prepares your application to generate synthetic data that conforms to the source schema.

Use this task to run discovery on an application’s reference connectors.

Re-running discovery to refresh the schema (Re-discover) is not supported in this release.

Prerequisite

Ensure that the application has at least one reference connector configured with valid, connection-tested credentials.

Steps

  1. From the top navigation bar, click Synthetic, then click Applications in the left navigation pane.

  2. On the Applications page, click View for the application.

  3. In the upper‑right corner of the application details page, click Actions, then select Discover.

  4. Confirm the action when prompted.

Synthetic Data initiates a discovery workflow in the background. While discovery is in progress, the status shows Discovering, along with percent complete and estimated time remaining. The progress response can also report the current phase as SCHEMA_DISCOVERY, VECTOR_SEARCH, or ASDD.

To cancel an in-progress discovery, click Cancel, then confirm the action when prompted. API users can call POST /synthetic/applications/{id}/cancel-sync.

When discovery completes successfully, the status updates to Active, and the discovered schema and assigned generators are available for use. You can review and adjust the generator assignments for any field if needed before generating data.

If discovery fails (for example, a connection test failure), the status shows Error. Any metadata saved during the attempt is automatically reverted. If the Syngen API restarts while discovery is in progress, the operation and its associated DCT job are marked Error with a restart message. Fix the issue (such as correcting connector credentials) and run discovery again.