Overview

The Quickstart Enterprise Data Model (QS EDM) is a ready-to-use CDF data model that standardizes core industrial data — Assets, Equipment, Time Series, Work Orders, Files, 3D models, and more — into a single, deploy-ready structure. It ships with 46 containers, 39 views, and two composed data models (enterprise and search-optimized), giving delivery teams a consistent, scalable foundation for industrial applications without designing a schema from scratch. The model is built on Cognite's Common Data Model (CDM) and is designed to be extended per project using configuration overrides.

Who is this for & when to use

Target personas: Delivery Engineer, Data Modeller, CDF Administrator setting up a new CDF project for industrial operations.

Use this pack when:

• Starting a new CDF project and you need a complete enterprise data model covering assets, maintenance, time series, files, and 3D without building it from scratch.
• You want a CDM-compliant baseline that your team can extend with project-specific views and containers.
• You need a standardized schema shared across multiple sites or projects within the same organization.
• You are deploying the Quickstart Deployment Pack (QS DP) — this module is one of its core components.
• You want a reference model to evaluate or compare your existing data model using AI tooling.

When NOT to use this pack:

• If your project requires a domain-specific data model (oil & gas, manufacturing) — use the CFIHOS Oil & Gas or ISA Manufacturing deployment packs instead, which extend CDM with domain-specific standards.
• If your project needs only a data model subset — individual views and containers can be selected from constituent modules rather than deploying the full QS EDM.

Why you need it

Designing an enterprise data model from scratch — mapping assets, equipment, work orders, time series, files, and 3D resources to CDM interfaces, configuring spaces, and wiring 46 containers to 39 views — typically takes weeks of schema design and iteration before any data can be ingested.

This pack eliminates that effort by providing a production-validated baseline that:

• Cuts onboarding from weeks to hours — deploy a fully configured enterprise schema in a single cdf deploy run.
• Standardizes the data language across sites — a consistent definition for Assets, TimeSeries, WorkOrders, and Files means applications built for one site work for all others.
• Ships two data models in one module — a full enterprise model for complete access and a search-optimized subset for CDF Search and Industrial Tools.
• Uses a modular, mix-in architecture — the model grows with the project without requiring structural overhauls. Override space names, organization prefix, and model versions per environment.
• Provides a high-speed API surface — leverages the CDF Data Modeling Service for structured GraphQL queries across all enterprise entities.

What's included

Prerequisites

Verify all of the following before starting deployment:

• Cognite Toolkit version 0.7.33 or later is installed. Follow the setup instructions.
• A cdf.toml file exists in your project root. If missing, run cdf init and select Create toml file (required).
• Authentication is configured and verified — run cdf auth init and cdf auth verify using a local .env file. See the Toolkit authentication docs.
• Your CDF project has Data Modeling enabled.
• The CDF group used by Toolkit has the following capabilities: spaces:write, datamodels:write, datasets:write, rawdb:write.

Deployment & installation

Choose your setup path

1. Existing Toolkit project

Use this path if you already have a local Toolkit project and only want to add the Quickstart Enterprise Data Model.

a. Point cdf.toml at the Cognite Library

Long-time Toolkit users may still have [library.cognite] pointing at toolkit-data. Update it to the official library release:

[library.cognite]
url = "https://github.com/cognitedata/library/releases/download/latest/packages.zip"

b. Enable deployment packs in cdf.toml

[alpha_flags]
deployment-pack = true

c. Add the QS Enterprise Data Model module

From your project directory:

cdf modules add -d qs_enterprise_dm

d. Update the configuration

Open config.dev.yaml and override space names, organizationName, and reservedWordPrefix if the defaults do not fit your project. See Configuration reference for all parameters. Default values work for an initial test deployment.

e. Build and deploy

cdf build
cdf deploy --dry-run
cdf deploy

After deployment, the enterprise data model, containers, views, and spaces are available in your CDF environment.

Verify folder structure

modules/
└── models/
    └── qs_enterprise_dm/

2. Starting from scratch

Use this path for a new Toolkit project with only the Quickstart Enterprise Data Model.

a. Initialize the project

In an empty directory:

cdf modules init .

b. Select QS Enterprise Data Model in the interactive UI

In the terminal:

• Choose Data models (data models that extend the core data model).
• Use Space to select Quick Start Enterprise Data Model.
• Press Enter to confirm.

Toolkit downloads the library, creates the module under modules/models/qs_enterprise_dm/, and updates config.dev.yaml / config.prod.yaml.

c. Update the configuration

Open config.dev.yaml and update space names, organizationName, and reservedWordPrefix as needed (see step 1d above).

d. Build and deploy

cdf build
cdf deploy --dry-run
cdf deploy

After either path, the Quickstart Enterprise Data Model, containers, views, and spaces are deployed to your CDF environment.

Verification

After deployment, perform the following checks:

1. Verify that cdf deploy completed without errors and reported successful deployment of spaces, containers, views, and data models.

2. In Cognite Data Fusion, navigate to Data Modeling → Spaces and verify that all three spaces exist: sp_enterprise_process_industry (or your configured enterpriseSchemaSpace), sp_enterprise_instance, and sp_site_instance.

3. Navigate to Data Modeling → Data Models and verify that both the DataModel (enterprise) and DataModelSearch (search-optimized) are listed and can be opened.

4. Open the DataModel and verify that key views are present: Asset, Equipment, WorkOrder, MaintenanceOrder, TimeSeries, FileRevision, Notification, and FunctionalLocation.

5. Navigate to Data Modeling → Containers and verify that the expected containers are deployed in the schema space.

The deployment is successful when all three spaces exist, both data models are accessible, and all containers and views are visible in CDF.

Configuration reference

Default values are set in default.config.yaml inside the module. Override them in your environment config file (config.dev.yaml or config.<env>.yaml) under the variables.modules.qs_enterprise_dm key.

variables:
  modules:
    qs_enterprise_dm:
      enterpriseSchemaSpace: sp_myorg_process_industry
      enterpriseInstanceSpace: sp_myorg_instance
      siteInstanceSpace: sp_mysite_instance
      organizationName: MyOrg
      reservedWordPrefix: MyOrg_
      sourceName: Houston AVEVA PI

Architecture

The QS EDM is structured as a CDF Toolkit module under modules/models/qs_enterprise_dm/. It provisions three spaces, 46 containers, and 39 views, then composes them into two data models — a full enterprise model and a search-optimized subset.

qs_enterprise_dm/
├── data_modeling/
│   ├── containers/           (46 container definitions)
│   ├── views/                (39 view definitions)
│   ├── qs-enterprise.datamodel.yaml
│   └── qs-enterprise-search.datamodel.yaml
├── schema.space.yaml
├── enterprise.instance.space.yaml
├── site.instance.space.yaml
├── default.config.yaml
└── module.toml

CDF spaces

Data models

Enterprise Data Model (DataModel) — combines all 39 enterprise views with 31 CDM base views into a single queryable model. Provides complete access to all entities.

Enterprise Search Data Model (DataModelSearch) — a lightweight subset for CDF Search and Industrial Tools. Includes: Asset, Equipment, TimeSeries, FileRevision, Notification, WorkOrder, AssetClass, AssetType, EquipmentType, FileCategory, and their corresponding CDM types.

Core asset & equipment views

Maintenance & work management views

Data & file views

Cross-cutting views

3D and 360-degree image views

The model includes a full set of 3D views (3DModel, 3DObject, 3DRevision, CADModel, CADRevision, CADNode, PointCloudModel, PointCloudRevision, PointCloudVolume, CubeMap) and 360-degree image views (360Image, 360ImageAnnotation, 360ImageCollection, 360ImageModel, 360ImageStation), each implementing the corresponding Cognite CDM type.

Key relationships

• Asset is the central entity — connected to children (hierarchy), equipment, files, activities, time series, and 3D objects. All major entities carry a source relation to SourceSystem and a UUID custom property.
• FunctionalLocation mirrors the Asset hierarchy but represents functional positions in a facility.
• Notification triggers MaintenanceOrder, which contains Operations.
• WorkOrder contains WorkOrderOperations, each tracked by WorkOrderOperationConfirmations.
• Reportable provides cross-cutting sys* properties (site, unit, tags found/linked) shared by Activity, TimeSeries, MaintenanceOrder, and Operation.

Troubleshooting

For issues not covered here, contact your Cognite support team or post in #topic-deployment-packs on Slack.

Support & ownership