Sources Data Prep for Calculated Fields - Extend functionalities in Sources data prep to process hierarchical data structures like in Destinations

[#1]

Description

These days, the AEP sources data prep UI for calculated fields is lacking basic functions to (easily) transform incoming data structures like arrays through a computed field into a target structure of any kind which makes it really cumbersome to work with. Also, asterisk syntax is only supported in standard mapping fields.

Why is this feature important to you

Well, the source data often does not match the XDM schema data and has to be brought into the right format. The provided functions are insufficient. The destinations data prep, however, seems to contain more functions to transform hierarchies.

How would you like the feature to work

Let's start with something trivial like looping over arrays to transform their data.

Destinations Data Prep:

transformArray([5, 6, 7], x -> x + 1)

Sources Data Prep: ???

Current Behaviour -

It seems impossible or at least extremely cumbersome to do even minimal transformations on any array or object data on the Source side.

This in turn puts potentially a lot of extra work on the devs to provide the right data input format, potentially increasing the size of the to be imported data significantly if the target structure has to be pre-built.

This comes with a lot of implications like necessary adjustments on the data providing side, should anything ever change in the schema.